A Mile With Sorrow
by twitchy witch
Summary: Sequel to "In the Ever Afterlife." The unthinkable has happened and both Evie and Al are reeling over it. Can Evie pull it together to save herself and those who need her help? Pairings: OC/OC, Rachel/Al
1. The Story So Far

**Our Story So Far**

This story is a continuation of "In the Ever Afterlife." If you'd like to start the saga from the beginning, the first story in the series is "The Scar," followed by "Ashes to Ashes" and "The Mark." Canon is current up until _Black Magic Sanction_, at which point it incorporates some plot elements of _Pale Demon_ (not necessarily in the same way or using the same timeline).

To briefly summarize the story up to this point, Evie is a witch who discovered she is also a Rosewood survivor. There is a third demoness as well, a mysterious young woman named Hope, who is currently Newt's ward. Evie has a complicated love-hate relationship with the demon Ash, who until recently was a hunter of familiars like Al. However, about two months ago he tricked Evie into being his student, and then tricked her into becoming mutual familiars and even (briefly) into being a mated pair, though an accident broke that bond. Technically, however, the demon courts ruled that she actually owns _him. _(As I said...complicated.)

As far as the events of Pale Demon are concerned, Rachel has just been banished to the Ever After by Nick instead of the Coven, but the effects are the same. In this universe, the Coven pardoned Rachel and lifted her shunning at the convention and the road trip with Trent hasn't happened (Lucy hasn't been born yet). Coven member Leon (who was unnamed in BMS) is named Adrian in this story, and he is sympathetic to Evie and Rachel, though Vivian and the others still view the demon girls as dangerous liabilities who might one day let the world know about witch origins. Evie had been shunned, since the Coven has learned she is a demon's familiar and thus under his control. She hasn't told them that Ash is her familiar as well, having resigned herself to a life in the Ever After.

Ellasbeth is just about to give birth to her child, Lucy, but there is an additional complication- Ellasbeth's parents long ago made a deal with another demon, Zaebos, in which they would provide a healthy demon girl (Hope) in exchange for a sample of elven DNA. They no longer need the DNA thanks to Rachel, and Hope now belongs to Newt. But the deal is still on- and if Ellasbeth cannot deliver Hope to Zaebos, Zee will take her child. Ellasbeth blames Evie (rather unfairly) for letting Newt run off with Hope and promises to unleash a deadly elven curse on Evie if Zee takes Lucy from her. Evie and Rachel both marked Hope to ensure that neither Zee nor Newt could claim full ownership of her. Evie, uncertain of her future, has transferred ownership of hers to Rachel.

The previous story just wrapped up when Nick released Ku'Sox to avenge himself on Al and Ash in particular, and demonkind in general. Ku'Sox killed Nick, and his actions would have killed Ash if Evie had not allied with Al to save him. But Al had his own agenda. In Evie's form, he banished Ash to the surface, and then told Evie Ash had died (which he had, briefly).

This marks a major turning point in the story, so it seemed appropriate to start anew.

The title is inspired by a poem: _Along the Road _by Robert Browning Hamilton

_I walked a mile with Pleasure;  
>She chatted all the way;<br>But left me none the wiser  
>For all she had to say.<em>

_I walked a mile with Sorrow  
>And ne'er a word said she;<br>But, oh! The things I learned from her,  
>When Sorrow walked with me.<em>

To those of you still reading...holy cow, thank you so much for sticking with this! It's entirely due to your encouragement that I've continued writing and allowing myself to explore and craft such a complex story. As I've said, I have a destination in mind...it may take only ten chapters or another hundred to get there. I love all your feedback and some of my best inspirations come from your suggestions. This has been a phenomenal experience for me- I never expected I had such a novel inside! And the ideas just keep coming!


	2. One Week Later

**One Week Later...**

"Again."

Inwardly I groaned, but I didn't want to get cuffed for voicing the complaint. Al was short on pity and patience these days. I simply braced myself, raising my aching arms into a ready position. Al corrected my posture with several impatient taps of his staff, eyes hard and distant. We'd been drilling for over two hours, and even my improved body, newly cursed to give me the same demonic speed and strength they all possessed, had its physical limits. And it still bruised just as readily. At this point I had no strength left for blocking the blows, and Al was wiping the floor with me. I suspected the lesson had ended twenty minutes ago, and now he was just taking out leftover aggression on me, but I didn't dare ask.

Demon martial arts incorporated movement, magic, and basic instinct. I tried to let myself relax, but every time I let Therese take over, Al could tell, and the consequences were disastrous. We were trying to reintegrate the two halves of my personality- or at least, that's what Al said. Therese was happy enough- eager, even- to learn how to beat on people. But the Evie side of me was a pacifist, and only wanted to duck and cover when Al finally stopped circling and lunged at me.

Al left me in a throbbing heap on the floor. He dropped his staff, letting it thunk me on the head, and hissed in impatient disgust. "Heal yourself," he said, indicating that the lesson was over. "You have an hour for your stirring before we work on spindling."

I stood and gave him the formal bow that he required for these exercises, the gesture still unfamiliar and awkward. He didn't bother to return it. "Yes, _Barexda_," I replied tonelessly, reaching within and triggering one of the precious healing curses that I'd brewed up the day before. _Enlightened one._ A term for a master, from a pupil. Better than addressing Al as "professor" or "master," I supposed, but every time I spoke it, I heard Ash's own term of endearment in my head. _Berexadtha. _

_Beloved._

Even if Ash had only been using it sarcastically, well...it still hurt to hear it. Hurt to use it. Hurt to remember. I supposed that was the point. Al had seen my soul, learned it through and through, and this was just another little hurt he could inflict on me "for my own good." Like the new silver wristbands I wore that bound me to Al's demesnes. I couldn't leave his rooms without Al at my side, unless summoned. This was the typical master-student arrangement, or so I was informed by both Al and Newt. Personally I thought they were just afraid to lose yet another demon again so soon. Hope was under similar house arrest. I was denied even a mirror of my own—though the only calls I could expect now would be from demons eager to bribe me for fancy memories, so I didn't care much. Al had made it clear that I wasn't going to be building tulpas for fun and profit any time soon.

After Al left, I flashed into the workroom, to stir the curses for my community service potions. It didn't seem fair that they were holding me to it, but being Al's student was no different in the eyes of the court than being Ash's. Part of me was grateful that Al took the training so seriously. Al was using every trick he knew to get me up to speed, and had left me hardly any time for basic things like eating, sleeping...or feeling. Every moment spent fighting or cursing or stirring was a moment I didn't have to think about how my life had altered since that fatal dawn a week before.

He'd been too late. Al had dispassionately described how the sun and the ley lines had rasped and shredded my demon's soul between them, until he'd come apart entirely. The agony he must have felt as his immortal soul was obliterated—

I blinked tears from my eyes and gathered what I'd need. I pushed down the upwelling of emotion without examining it too closely. I knew there was grief in there, but I couldn't let myself begin to plumb its intricacies and depths just yet. I set each component down onto Al's slate table with mechanical preciseness, pausing only when I picked up the largest spell pot. A brief memory- Al tossing a crumpled piece of paper into it, of Rachel's exasperated protest, and the incongruously pleasant evening that had followed…

That undid me. It was bad enough losing Ash, as tangled and confusing as my feelings for him were. But to lose Rachel three days later, to the same demon? Worse, _in the same manner_, torn apart by the implacable, vicious energies of a ley line?

Pierce appeared on the screaming face on the floor, looking thin and drawn. Al's recaptured familiar now had a set of the new and improved (and as yet still Pierce-proof) silver cuffs as well. He said little these days, having lost a lot of his spark. What aggression Al didn't take out on me, he took out on Pierce in far more degrading and painful ways. The witch still had a crumpled, battered nobility to his stance, and I marveled at the steel core in this man that had let him survive not only centuries of purgatory, but losing the woman he'd loved.

He didn't have to say anything. Neither of us was able to talk about Rachel's death yet. He just knelt beside me and wrapped an arm about my shoulders with silent sympathy. After several endless minutes he rose and began to help prepare the ingredients for my curses. Watching him reduced to the role of a slave again, doing work that I was meant to do, galvanized me enough to pull myself together. I gently nudged him aside once I was able to continue.

The silence stretched thin and lonely. "You don't blame yourself, do you?" I startled myself and Pierce by voicing the thought unintentionally. Al certainly blamed Pierce, but I couldn't. Not after seeing how incredibly powerful Ku'Sox was.

"Aye." Pierce remained focused on his task, sketching various figures on a parchment in preparation for twisting a complex set of curses for Al. He was listening, but he was also obviously distracted by more than his sketching. "T'was my own wounded pride bid me run off when she needed me most." He didn't elaborate further, though his fingers were restless against the tabletop. I got the impression again that more had happened that he couldn't yet speak about- had he and Rachel perhaps had another fight? Had Rachel ever told him about her night with Al? Had he said things he now regretted?

"She loved you," I said. "I wish I knew if—" Grief gripped my throat and strangled my voice. I'd never know now what Ash had really felt for me. I only knew that I'd never allow another demon to get so close again. I might have said "man," but that assumed that any other species would be willing to get close to me. In reality, I was a shunned witch. In the Ever After, I was a prize to be won and owned. Never again.

He stopped sketching, eyes fixed on something far more distant than his figures. "I know it," Pierce said, leaving my second statement unanswered. Avoiding my eyes, he rose and began to gather the materials for his spell. Everything about him spoke of guilt, and as much as it hurt me to see him blaming himself, I wasn't going to change his mind. "Mistress, you've never—"

"Pierce, please, I beg you to stop calling me that. It's bad enough to see you stuck being a slave to Al again. Don't get me in on the act, too."

Pierce gave me a tired look through the bangs of his disheveled hair, smiling crookedly. He really did have a certain roguish charm, though it would be years before it might begin to crack its way into the layers of ice around my wounded heart. He gave me a little bow of acquiescence. "You've never once inquired what I was about when I lit off on my own hook."

It took me a moment to piece through the slang. "No. You haven't told Al, so I didn't ask. He'd find out through me. I don't want to get you in trouble."

Pierce nodded, as if I'd confirmed an unwelcome suspicion. His blue eyes pinched with sorrow and perhaps something more subtle, as he appeared to really see me through his own grief for the first time. Shoulders slumped as if I'd just added yet another burden to his load, he said, "You look peaked."

"Not sleeping much. Al says I don't need it anymore, but…my brain is so exhausted." I managed to cut myself while dicing and stuck the sullen, throbbing fingertip into my mouth. It wasn't worth wasting a whole-body healing curse on, as Al might have done. I only had two left until I brewed more. And I didn't know how to confine the effects to where they needed. "I feel like…how does that quote go? Too little butter spread over too much bread?"

"The runt's never read Tolkein," Al said, startling both of us. "Too bad, he could do with a little more culture."

"I opine Rachel appreciated a diamond in the rough over a polished blowhard," Pierce said quietly, not looking up.

Al straightened, eyes glittering with more than anger. "That's not what _she_ said," he said sullenly.

My eyes met Pierce's. Al wasn't up to his usual standards of hurtful banter today. Pierce's eyes were narrowed in something like satisfaction at scoring a hit, which I found equally irritating. Not to mention, taunting Al these days was rather more apt to provoke a disproportionately painful response. But I'd never understood why Pierce put up with Al in the first place- and it _had_ been somewhat voluntary, up until the new silver had rendered us both powerless. Was he_ trying_ to get killed off, now that the woman he'd signed on to protect was dead?

When Pierce didn't respond further to his bait, Al shoved him away from the table and glanced over my own curse-work critically. He found fault with everything, but they were only minor imperfections that wouldn't harm this particular curse. I had to hear about them anyway. I didn't reply, beyond another, "Yes, _Berexda,_" which for some reason made his face sour with irritation. Maybe he thought that having the only sane demon woman left chained in his kitchen stirring curses like a common familiar would be more fun. Maybe I was supposed to be fighting him, as Rachel would have. Frankly, I didn't see the point, and I _wanted_ to learn what he was teaching me. It was the only solace and distraction I had left.

"We'll have to get you a new _yazatach_. As soon as your spindling has reached full efficiency, we'll begin the higher-level exercises."

Startled, I looked up. Al was glancing over the figures Pierce had been working on, scribbling some out and grunting with begrudging approval at the others. "So soon?"

"You haven't been fighting it. It goes quickly if you don't resist it."

I waited for him to add how he would be disappointed that the torture sessions were over, or at least elaborate on his innuendo, but he didn't. Keeping my voice steady required most of my concentration, but my hands still shook as I gently added the rest of the essential oils to the mix. I managed to catch the last superfluous drop before it fell in and ruined my efforts. Peachy. Now I'd smell like thyme oil for the rest of the day. Ick. "Did you have anyone in mind?"

Al grunted and rolled his eyes at me. "Well, Newt is right out- she's too wrapped up in her own little _tiruncula_ at the moment. I don't trust anyone else to do it properly." He shoved the notes aside and turned his attention to what I was doing again.

"You?" My heat began to race at the thought. Form such an intimate bond with another demon so soon? I could handle Al assaulting my mind on a regular basis. Giving him my aura, too? My stomach churned at the thought. "You told me once you sure as hell didn't want-"

"Yes, well, that was when I believed my services would be required for another." I peered at him under my lashes as I began the tedious task of dividing the curses between six dozen little vials. I was grateful I didn't have to cut open a vein to quicken all of them. Fortunately for my finite blood supply, they were intended to be personalized by the demons who would invoke them. Al was playing with a discarded flower stalk, stripping off the leaves with distracted efficiency.

The news that the torturous spindling sessions were nearly at an end was heartening. Of course, there were probably plenty of other ways Al would enjoy torturing me, possibly worse than burning and shaping additional pathways in my mind. Having him constantly in my head, for example, might qualify. I wasn't so far gone that I _completely _didn't care. Just mostly.

I began to cap the headless army of little curse-vials, and was startled to find that Al was helping, instead of ordering Pierce to do it. Perhaps Al also found solace from dark thoughts in activity. After all, his training schedule left _him_ little time for much eating, sleeping, or feeling of his own. He'd been off his game since Rachel's death, too, and right now….well, if I hadn't just seen Pierce, I might not have made the connection, but Al's actions and distraction bespoke his own guilty conscience. I wondered if he blamed himself for her loss as well.

_Either that, or there's something huge they aren't telling you,_ Therese whispered. I dismissed the thought as paranoia. Or rather, as both paranoid and irrelevant. Of course there were things Pierce and Al weren't telling me. Nobody told _me_ anything.

I thought briefly about commenting, but a sneeze jerked my frame. I managed to prevent a spill only through my new demon-enhanced quick reflexes, which were still startling to witness coming from my own body. "I'm being summoned."

"Who?" he demanded.

"Has to be Adrian. Coven member. He's the only other one who knows my name."

Al grunted, then peered into empty space, judging the time. He couldn't stop me from being summoned, and now that Ku'Sox was confined to the Ever After, reality was relatively safe. "It's daytime. I'll give you half an hour." He continued capping the vials absently, then gave me a nasty little grin. "Bring him back with you, and I'll give you the week off," he added.

I made a humorless huff of laughter at the thought. "Yeah. Sure, Al. _Beraxda,_" I amended, when he growled warningly at me. I closed my eyes and let the warmth of the line take me.


	3. A Sliver of Hope

_I promise the whole story isn't going to be as angsty. Besides, you all know what's up with Rachel! Also, minor canon-change: Quen was there when Al showed up, not Vivian. Which is why he's not in the ICU- he's far more of a badass. ;)_

**In Which Evie Boils Over**

Where the hell was I?

Pipes crawled around me as I sat cross-legged on a bare concrete floor. Everything was painted industrial white, though now it was a neglected, flaking grey. A furnace crouched across the room, breathing creepy-furnace-y noises at me, and various other metallic creaks and clanks echoed in the dimly-lit room.

A boiler room? I almost laughed. What more appropriate place to summon a demon? And how ridiculous that it still creeped me out to be down here. After all, I _was_ the nightmare now.

I looked up to see Adrian, nervous and embarrassed-looking. "Uh…" He was even more tongue-tied than usual. "Sorry about…you know." He indicated the grungy room.

I shrugged. He hadn't used a circle. Good for him. "Where else does one summon a big scary monster? Don't sweat it. I have half an hour before I have to go back. What can I do for you?"

Something in my tone or demeanor was making Adrian fidget, though he did offer me a hand up. He didn't seem repelled by the burnt amber stink I'd brought with me, but his brow furrowed as he examined my face more closely. "What's wrong, Evie?"

"What's_ not _wrong? Rachel's dead. Ash is dead. I'm stuck with Al and he's putting me through hell."

Adrian stared in shock. "Wait, what? Ash? Your…uh…?"

"Personal demon? Yeah. Long story. Deader than a doornail. Ku'Sox got him, too, a few days before Rachel."

"I'm…should I be sorry?" he asked.

"_You_ don't have to be." I was a little shocked at how normal my voice sounded- or rather, how cold and unfeeling. Heaven forbid Adrian should suspect me of mourning Ash. "But I am. Anyway, Al will call me home soon. What do you need?"

"Need?" Adrian was thrown off his stride again. "I, uh, don't need anything. I just….well, I mean, there's the Hope thing and I didn't know how else to get in touch with you."

"So you summoned me into a boiler room…?" I asked, eying my surroundings with amusement.

"Well, yeah. I didn't want to scare anyone. But, I thought, you and Rachel were friends, so maybe you wanted to, uh, see her and…say goodbye."

I blinked at him. The boiler room suddenly took on a far more grim significance. "This is a hospital." He nodded. "She's upstairs?"

"On life support. Her family…well…"

I squeezed my eyes shut as this news cracked the careful wall I'd only just finished rebuilding. Not only the tragedy of Rachel's early death, but that there was still someone in reality who'd even spared a thought for me and my grief. "Please…take me to see her."

They'd cleaned her up, but she was still pale and bruised from her ordeal. She was and motionless and barely breathing, tied to this world through wires and driplines and beeping technology. I sent out a tendril of awareness, seeking something, anything left within her that could be salvaged. I searched across the mental breadth of the demon collective as well.

But I only confirmed what the flat line of the EEG monitor had to tell me. There was nothing left of her soul, nothing at all. She was gone.

I sat down beside her, my gaze only now touching on the other inhabitants of the room: Ivy, Jenks, her gargoyle Bis…and Trent Kalamack and his security officer Quen, both well-bandaged from some dreadful ordeal of their own. The mood was somber, lifeless. I had nothing to say to them that I couldn't say with my silent grief.

They exchanged nods with Adrian and left the two of us alone with Rachel. I thought for a moment they were being awfully trusting. But there was a security camera in the corner, and one of Adrian's recording amulets hung on Rachel's IV bag- not to mention Adrian was a Coven member and not too shabby with the spells himself. That…and there was nothing left to protect, was there?

I brushed a red curl from Rachel's still, peaceful face, and my grief was suddenly too much to bear. Adrian put a tentative arm around my shoulders, jerking a little in surprise when I buried my face into his shoulder and nearly screamed with misery. I couldn't cry in front of Al, couldn't let him see what he already knew from his violations of my mind. I had a truckload of mental exercises designed to calm me. But Adrian's simple gesture was the first really kind thing anyone had done for me since I'd awoken to find my world shattered a week before.

The storm passed quickly, however. I had no time to indulge in self-pity. Al would call me back home all too soon, and then I'd have plenty of distraction as he slashed and burned the last of the barriers to the energy pathways into my mindscape. With that delightful thought to hold on to, I blew my nose and worked on calming myself. I looked up, rubbing a puffy eye, when Adrian handed me another tissue. His eyes were glistening.

"You really cared about her, didn't you? I didn't know that you were that close."

"We were kinda going through a lot of the same shit together, you know?" My voice was far from cold now…it was rough and tired and still tended to catch. "I admired her a lot. She was so…strong. And good. She was so _good_. It's just so…unfair, everything she was put through. She didn't deserve any of it." I felt an old familiar pain plucking at my heart: guilt. Guilt that I had lived, and she hadn't. I closed my eyes and tried to banish that feeling, but it was growing.

Adrian hadn't moved his arm, and the tiny little critic in my brain chuckled at his nerve. "No, she didn't. For what it's worth, the world sees her as a hero now, instead of a marginally acceptable mostly-good black witch. Do you happen to know if she actually killed Ku'Sox?"

"No," I said, wiping my eyes again. "But she trapped him in the Ever After forever. He can't even be summoned out, now. The demons are both relieved and exasperated as hell that they have to put up with him full time. He doesn't get nearly the respect now that they know he can't destroy the Ever After without destroying himself, too."

"So what's this about you and Rachel's demon?" he asked, and I explained in a dull voice everything that had happened over the past week. He looked sick when I dispassionately told him how Al had taken over as my trainer, and some of the techniques he used to gauge my mental progress. Or perhaps it was shocked disgust that I didn't seem more upset about it. I didn't really care. I also filled him in on what we'd learned about Zee and his plans for Hope.

"So nothing's really changed," I concluded. "Zee is pissed and I don't know if he'll take it out on Ellasbeth and her child, or Newt and I, now that Ash and Rachel are gone. I don't know if the deal gives him the right to take her baby or not. He wouldn't tell us."

"I've spoken to Trenton Kalamack about it."

"Trent? What's his interest in all this? Other than the obvious, I guess," I added, thinking of the elven curse that so decimated their numbers.

"He won't say, but it seems personal."

"Well, he _was_ engaged to Ellasbeth once," I suggested.

Adrian shrugged. One of his hands moved on my shoulder, a gentle stroke, but he stopped self-consciously. "Anyway, he says there may be something he can do, if we can dig up the exact details of the original deal. It's got to be documented somewhere other than the lab. But he also says we have to do it, because he can't be seen to be interfering. And since you're the target of Ellasbeth's curse—"

"Bring it on, bitch," I said sourly, then sighed. "Has she gone into labor yet? Will she soon?"

"No. It could be any time, though. Elves are into the natural childbirth thing so they won't induce her unless there's something life-threatening. I'll keep digging on my end."

His interest in this whole matter startled me, and I glanced at him questioningly. "It involves the Coven, I'm sure of it. Viv thinks so, too. And since everyone sees Rachel as a hero now, it'd be kinda nice to see if we can get you off the hook, too. You know, for the lab disaster."

"What difference does it make?" I asked tonelessly. "I'm still stuck in the Ever After. You really expect me to believe that the Coven might un-shun me if I save a baby?"

"Why not? You did say that Ash was dead. You're not Al's familiar, are you?"

I blinked. "N-no," I said, not sure how they'd react to the idea of _me_ making Al _my_ familiar instead. But I also hadn't even considered the possibility that I might still potentially have a life in reality. "What about Devi and those other summoners?" I asked, heart pounding.

"Oh, you mean the subway thing? The terrorists struck again, and this time we caught them. They confessed to everything."

I stared at him until he blushed under my scrutiny. "Seriously? No way!"

"Yeah, way," he said, his smile hesitant but real. "I'll talk to the others, tell them you're no longer a demon's familiar. I should also mention that the news that Rachel's a demon got out. People are already pointing to the similarities between you two. If you do something as…well…good-deedy as she did, it would go a long way toward demonstrating that you two aren't a threat."

"Weren't," I corrected softly, glancing at the still, silent figure on the bed again.

"Right," he said, squirming. "I just…can't believe she's gone."

"Yeah, me either." I watched his hand, now idly stroking the blanket at the edge of the bed. "Do you know how much longer they'll keep her on life support?"

Adrian grimaced uncomfortably. "A few more days. Her mom's coming out, assuming she, ah, doesn't wake up."

"She won't. Even demons can't come back from a soul-death." Tears threatened again, but I pushed them back. This was the death that Ivy now faced, like all living vampires. How it must have killed her to see Rachel in this state.

And demons had made the vampires. _And_ the ley lines. _And _Ku'Sox. Such excellent artisans of destruction and death we were. Connoisseurs of suffering, really.

I was pretty sure my thirty minutes was almost up. I wasn't ready to go back, yet. I was surviving Al because I'd made myself numb. I'd managed numbness because there was nothing to look forward to in my future. Adrian had suddenly given me an inkling of hope, and I was suddenly frightened to even look at it too closely. And suddenly I couldn't bear the idea of being alone again.

Impulsively I stood and went hunting around through drawers, finding what I wanted in an unlabeled cupboard. Unsure how to do this, I picked a largish vein on the back of my hand and carefully guided the needle into it, biting my lip when I missed the first time and had to try again. As Adrian watched with dawning understanding, I drew a small amount of blood, then handed him the syringe.

"Won't he be mad?" Adrian asked without thinking. I guess Ash had scared him pretty badly! "Oh, right. Sorry." He slid the cap carefully onto the needle, then slipped the syringe into one of his many pockets. "Thanks."

"Shit. I forgot I don't have a mirror anymore. Well, I'll have to make one. But don't be surprised if you call me and get Al instead. And that reminds me. Adrian, don't _ever_ call me at night. Al can follow and I don't have any kind of agreement with him to protect my friends. He'd love to nab another Coven member. Don't let him."

Adrian shuddered. "Got it. Hey…have you…uh…seen Brooke?"

I winced as I applied a piece of gauze to my throbbing hand, but it was more of a reaction to Brooke's fate. "Rachel told me she works at a restaurant. She's a waitress."

Adrian looked nonplussed. "A waitress."

"Yeah. It's a swanky place, she said. Only really talented familiars can do the job. She's not happy, but…well, it could be a lot worse." A sort of spark flared off in my brain, Al's early warning that I was about to be yanked across the lines again. "He's about to call me back. I have to go."

Adrian stood up, looking everywhere but my eyes. "I'll, uh, be in touch."

I bent to kiss Rachel on the forehead, feeling my throat tighten up again. "Goodbye," I whispered, throat tightening once more. Then I shocked the daylights out of Adrian by embracing him tightly, and brushing my lips over his cheek with a heartfelt, "Thank you. Thank you for everything."

He had just raised a hand to touch the kiss, mouth open in an "O," when I let the summons fill me and drag me away.


	4. Playing with Fire

**In Which Evie Tastes a Line, Crosses Another, and Toes a Third**

It was not the brightest thing I've ever done, in retrospect. It was always pure instinct to stick a bubble around my thoughts when traveling in a line. Logic and self-preservation and every demon textbook on the subject said it would be Bad.

I wanted to know why.

The summons dragged me back into the shattered reality of the Ever After, still screaming from the shock of the awful biting endless cold that had seared my synapses. The chill of the stone floor was almost cozy when compared to the horrifying absolute zero of the ley line.

"Getting an early start on your lesson?" Al raised a brow, gazing down at me with a nonchalant curiosity. I couldn't move yet, just huddled in on myself. At least I had an excuse for the shuddering sobs and the tears. I managed an evil eye, at least. "If you'd enjoy screaming in my bedroom more often, you know you have only to ask."

Yes, the bedroom. I'd been sleeping in here with Al ever since Ku'Sox had been banished back to the Ever After, because of the protective wards etched into the stones of the walls. It didn't mean I was sharing a bed with my teacher, though. He got the bed, I got a pile of cushions and blankets on the floor. I might have balked at the arrangement, but as far as I could tell, Al had zero interest in molesting me.

Sexually, anyway. It didn't keep him out of my head. I knew it was coming the moment he hauled me to my feet and put a bare hand on my face. "Let's just see what got you all riled up, shall we?"

I struggled against his iron grip, protesting, "Al, don't, not this time. Please, you don't want to—"

But it was too late. Al relived the encounter from my point of view in about three seconds. So did I, and the pain of it hadn't had time to fade. Cursing under his breath, he hurled me away as if I were some foul, blistering thing he'd picked up by accident. He turned away, back stiff and hands clenched. I fought for my composure as well, hastily wiping the incipient tears from my eyes and fighting the growing tightness in my throat.

"I tried to warn you," I said without thinking. "I didn't want you to see it."

Al was silent, cold fury drifting from him like icy mist, filling the room with impenetrable chill. I knew his immobility wouldn't last, and I'd probably bear the brunt of his emotion in a minute or two. He bent his head a little, not quite glancing back at me. "Afraid for your little Coven friend?" he asked, voice arctic.

I blinked. "Well, no," I replied, confused. Then I felt my face blanch. _To spare _his_ feelings? Yeah, go ahead and tell him that, he'll love it._ _Shit._ "Never mind."

Al stayed where he was for another endless minute, until my nerves began to unravel with anticipation. Then he vanished, making me squeak with surprise.

Uncertain what to do with myself, I got ready for what I assumed was the next phase of my training. I would be unconscious for a long time while I recovered, so I donned a comfortable set of sweats, sat on my sad little pile of blankets, and waited. And waited. Al leaving me alone without orders for any length of time was unprecedented. And in that time a whole litany of unpleasant thoughts paraded through my mind. I must have sat there for a good twenty minutes before I couldn't stand it any longer, and jumped back to the library to grab something to read.

To my surprise, Al was there, slouched in a chair staring into the fire, an unlabeled bottle dangling from his hand. He didn't spare me a glance or order me away, just took another swig. It must have been potent stuff, because I could already see his cheeks were flushed and his hand was unsteady.

I stared in amazement. I'd never even seen him drink a glass of wine. I wanted to ask if everything was all right, but of course it wasn't. It wasn't ever going to be all right again. But even risking hanging around a drunk demon was better than being alone with my own thoughts, so I picked up a textbook I'd left behind, and sat in a chair nearby. "Do you mind if I join you?"

Al just grunted and took another pull from the flask. I took that to mean that he wouldn't flay the skin from my bones for daring to interrupt him, so I settled down to read. A moment later I was beyond startled when Al thunked me in the chest with the bottle, clearly offering me some.

"No, thanks," I said, then, "Hey!" when Al whacked me again, more insistently. "I swore off that shit years ago," I explained haughtily.

"So? Who are you trying to impress?" Al took another swig, then offered the bottle again. "You're already damned."

I stared at the bottle he was offering, reminding myself that the manipulative creep knew exactly the right words to say, but it didn't seem to make a difference in how much it hurt. Guilt was already hanging on my back, weighing me down- why not give the old monkey a nudge and see if it still lingered there as well?

The liquor was bittersweet and angsty, and slid down my throat with a far-too-familiar, deceptively comforting burn. Oh, yes, I remembered this. Wasn't it my first encounter with Al that had made me give up my alcoholic ways? Fitting that he should be the one to drive me back into them.

About an hour later, two completely shitfaced demons were sitting out in some deserted national park in reality, getting into the kind of trouble that teenage hooligans usually encountered. I'd never been a hooligan before- not after _that_ summer, anyway.

Al, of course, had hooliganism in his demon blood. "That one," he ordered, pointing an unsteady finger at an undamaged spot. It amazed me that other hooligans hadn't already beaten us to the exciting job of busting out the abandoned nature center's many windows. But this was one of the dark places, places that humanity had abandoned once their numbers had dwindled and the wolves returned. There _might_ be a few weres who still ran in these forsaken forests on full moons, but only if their packmates were beside them. It was too close to the new moon for them to feel the pull.

Al had taken off one of the bracelets, increasing what energy I could manipulate. It felt real good, after a week of deprivation. Well, so did the buzz from the booze, and the way everything seemed to weigh so much less on my body and soul. I gathered a raw ball of ever-after energy, weighing it in my palm. I raised my arm, then realized I'd forgotten the word to invoke the ley line charm. Shrugging, I lobbed the raw energy instead. It fell short by a couple of feet, and Al made a disgusted sound.

"Pitiful. Watch this," he growled, standing and winding up like he was about to pitch a fastball. The curse burst from his fingers a moment before he had fully braced, and the elegantly clad demon fell inelegantly on his ass. A streak of sickly red fire streaked out and obliterated an unfortunate pine tree about a hundred yards beyond the building.

"What the hell? How could you miss? It's only, like, twenty feet away!" I said, smirking.

He scowled at me with bloodshot eyes. "You're only _two_ feet away, student. Want to try your luck?"

"You couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, Al," I taunted. "Take your best shot." His scowl deepened, so I got to my feet and began wobbling away. But only a few steps later I stumbled and braced against a corroded sign. We both crashed over in a cloud of dust and wounded pride. "Damn it!"

Al snorted as I extricated myself and raised the bottle to his lips for another drag. He grimaced again when nothing happened. We'd emptied it long before- which was probably why we weren't busily heaving our guts out by now. Grumbling petulantly, he sent the bottle flying through the window he'd indicated. Or rather, he tried, but his demon strength lent the bottle too much momentum and it shattered at the sudden acceleration, right in his hand. The shards were as effective as a shotgun blast on the remaining window, however. "Fuck," he complained, shaking glass and blood from his hand before healing it right up.

"You ever going to show me how to do that?" I asked. Was it even the same curse? There was so much I had to learn. I teetered my way back to the park bench and sat, enjoying the way the world whirled around me, and knowing it would turn to queasiness, then sickness, as the night progressed. Even in my prime, I was a cheap date. My tolerance still sucked. A demon lightweight, how lame. Maybe there was a curse to fix _that_?

"Sure, if I can find another bottle," he replied with a snicker. He wound up again, and this time his spell hit an ancient, empty water tower. The noise of the concussion sounded for all the world like a loud gong, resonating for nearly half a minute before dying away.

"Rachel could make hell's bells ring like that," Al said, eyes distant. He lost his balance and sat back down heavily on the park bench beside me. "She tried to kill me once, you know. I'm not sorry she's dead."

"Really?" I asked, startled. Rachel was the good one- she'd never kill anyone! "When?"

"When she woke up. Tried to seduce her. Nearly fried me. Pulled a line through me. Fucking _Newt_ showed up to save my ass."

"_Rachel?_ No way." I gaped at him, astonished. Damn. I was sorry I'd missed that.

Al leaned back on the bench, eyes on the stars. "It seemed like a good idea at the time. Finally got her stuck here with me. She'd just made her first deal with that idiot Tron. Everything was perfect." He hissed through his teeth, a sound that held far more than simple exasperation. "Stubborn little _canicula_."

I didn't say anything, though I could picture the scene in my head. Rachel had been wracked with guilt over betraying Pierce, hadn't figured out how to tell her companions about her impulsive night with Al. Not to mention she'd been stuck in the Ever After thanks to her ex. He'd pushed too soon, and she'd freaked out. Al couldn't possibly understand her tender feelings toward his witch familiar, her loyalty to her friends. None of which_ I'd_ had when Ash had cornered and seduced me so easily- what had _I_ to lose? But Rachel? She'd had everything to lose. "Yeah. Stubborn."

"Just last week she kicked Pierce's ass when he tried to kill me. I thought she was _over_ him. I fucking _hate_ crazy demon women."

I wondered if I was included in that, but decided I didn't care. "Wait, _Pierce_ almost killed you?"

"Of course not. _Ku'Sox_. Before he went after Ash. Little runt was tuned in enough to pinpoint when I was most vulnerable. Called her. She flew in like some avenging angel." Al shook his head, an expression of bewildered hurt on his face. "Then she gets all pissy and tries to kill me a week later" He shook his head, staring at his hands. "I'm not sorry she's dead. Too much trouble. Good riddance."

What was this, confession hour? Since when was I drinking buddies with Al? I didn't ask why I was his chosen confessor, but I didn't stop him and I didn't interrupt when he told me of other encounters, other contradictory, bewildering interactions he'd had with Rachel- all in the same haughty, slightly slurred tone. I did send another destructive bolt at the abandoned building, sort of an underscore to the general tone of belligerent loss in his words. It was as close a statement of mutual pain as I could manage.

Al, who was now slouched down with arms crossed petulantly and looking for all the world like a spoiled little brat who'd been sent to the corner, cursed me impatiently. He stood and hauled me to my feet, standing behind me to correct my stance. "You're the most inept student I've ever trained."

"Maybe that's the fault of my teacher?"

Al stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it. "I'm sorry, I don't believe I heard that properly. It sounded like you said you want to be tossed into a ley line again. Now focus," he demanded angrily, but it wasn't magic I was focused on. I froze in place, because he'd stuck his nose against the skin of my neck and was digging fingers into my shoulder in a highly charged, almost painful manner. He breathed in raggedly, and I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. Fuck.

"You smell like booze," I told him irritably, though my heart was starting to flutter uncomfortably. "Cut it out."

He chuckled, swaying a little. He slipped his other arm around me for balance, in a move that might have been smooth if he'd used any subtlety whatsoever. "You still smell like _him_," he said, sliding his nose up into my hair.

"You're imagining it. My body's been rebuilt at least three times since he died." It occurred to me, belatedly, that I wasn't making the best case for chastity here. "Not that it matters, I am so not interested."

Al startled me with a very brazen caress, fingers coming to rest at the junction of my thigh and belly. His other hand still held my outstretched wrist, where he'd presumably been about to correct something about my inelegant spell-flinging. One of his fingers traced something on my palm, and little whispers of ley line power flitted fleetingly into my wrist. "Are you so certain...?" he asked, pulling me tighter against his body.

"Hell yes!" I protested. "I am not nearly drunk enough to forget all those spindling sessions. Or the taunting, I'm still mad about the taunting."

"Oh, but wait until we begin to put your increased channeling abilities to use," he purred, his other hand getting in on the act. He slipped it under my shirt, the skin to skin contact opening a second sensual path for his demonic ley line communing. I didn't need to like it, or him, for my body to respond to what he was doing. It felt nice. Better than nice, it felt like liquid quicksilver dancing along my veins, mingling with the euphoria of the alcohol.

"I hate you." That wasn't really true. I didn't like Al. He didn't like me. But I'd put up with him to get what I wanted, because we'd made a deal and I needed him. I'd let him do a lot to me over the past week, let him order me around, fuck with my mind, and physically abuse me all in the name of training, but _this _was crossing the line. "More like loathe you, really. Your magic is your only redeeming quality," I replied, somewhat breathlessly. For fuck's sake, he wasn't even half trying, and already I was starting to soften around the edges. It was humiliating.

"And I would be remiss in my duties as your mentor if I did not instruct you fully in all of its myriad uses." I could hear the smirk in his voice. "It's not half as _fun_ if you don't loathe me."

"Let me go or I'll fucking roast you like she did," I warned, but he just laughed. A moment's struggle later I was wearing the second of the silver shackles again. "Coward!" I hissed at him, truly frightened now. Therese had overcome a bracelet's power before, but these were stronger, and there were two of them. I hadn't thought that Al would stoop low enough to actually sexually assault me, but apparently I was wrong. Had he planned this? Get me good and sloshed, then put the moves on me? Why the hell would he want to?

"Oh, come now," he said. "Doesn't it feel good?" It did. I was suddenly writhing in his grip as he turned the seduction up to eleven. My involuntary moan of surprise and pleasure turned into a gasp as he cut it off juuust before I came in his arms. It was suddenly hard to think straight, and I couldn't help my whimper of frustration. Still, there was a crudeness to it, no feeling behind it at all. Al was a sadist, but I was not a masochist aroused by humiliation. Therese was really getting pissed. Al chuckled again. "A good drunk fuck is the perfect cure for a broken heart."

"Whose, mine or yours?" I asked, suddenly getting it. It wasn't like he hadn't done this before- seducing me to piss off Rachel.

"I have no heart," he said sanctimoniously, like it was a joke. But I'd caught the brief shiver of emotion that had shaken his hold ever so slightly. I latched onto it with brutal efficiency.

"Bullshit, you fucking hypocrite. You wanted her, and she kicked your ass. She never loved you. You're pissed at her, and you despise me because I _have_ loved a demon. I'm not ashamed to admit it. So you'll defile _me_ to get back at _her_? You're a fucking basket case, you know that?"

Al had gone still as death at my words. I had a feeling he was suddenly stone cold sober, and that I was going to be very, very sorry in a moment. "Love. You really think Ash _loves_ you?" His laugh was cruel and bitter, too harsh for bare contempt. "If he hadn't been so distracted maybe he wouldn't have done such a shit job of training you. Maybe she'd still live if-"

"Don't go there," I growled, as he struck back at an equally exposed nerve. "I'm no fighter. I'd be dead, too."

"It should have been you. I'd swap you for her in a heartbeat." His shell had cracked and the vicious pain was leaking into his ragged voice. The trails of sensation still threading through me turned electric, overly hot, painful. I was no longer shuddering in bliss, but now writhing to get away from the increasing unpleasantness of Al's grief, being turned to prickling sensation. "I don't care what deal we had, I'd rip out your still-beating heart. Ash's too- if it would bring her back."

I felt a pang of misplaced guilt for managing to finally injure him. But I couldn't stop myself from poking the wound, either. "It won't. Nothing can bring them back."

There was just too much emptiness in our world, and we both knew it would never be filled. Al didn't reply, wouldn't allow himself to admit more than he had. I suddenly wondered what horrors lay in Al's past, and how much courage it had taken for him to open himself to the possibility of a future with Rachel- and how much her rejection and death had shattered him.

There was nothing remotely sensual in Al's growl now. I'd pushed him way over the line. I didn't care. I didn't want false empty pleasure, and never from Al. My self-destructive tendencies didn't include casual sex, even if I _was_ mad as hell at Ash for dying on me.

For leaving me.

"I might just dismember you anyway," he said in a low, harsh voice. "I'll make you look like her. I'll fuck your body raw and bloody, then I'll rape your mind, until you can't even remember how to beg for mercy. Then I'll rip you apart, slowly, starting with that insolent tongue. I'll enjoy it."

It felt like my heart tried to leap out of my throat. He meant it. He was as close to snapping as I'd ever seen him, and it scared the shit out of me. "We still have a deal, you bastard," I reminded him, understanding that any sign of pity or weakness on my part would be met with savage fury on his. "Stick to it or I'll sic Newt on your ass."

Al released me, and almost immediately I felt myself dissolve as he sent me back to the Ever After. When he didn't immediately follow, I summoned him back, too, rather than allow him the freedom of reality when he was in that black of a mood. My reward for such impertinence was repaid in full later that evening, once he'd sobered up and gotten his temper under control. It was the last spindling session I'd ever need.


	5. A Curse Between Us

_Another chapter of frustration and misery, partly inspired by Within Temptation's "What Have You Done." (I dislike lyrics in the text, but I put them at the end if you're interested and don't know the song). I tell you what, I'm glad there's so many other terrific, more upbeat Hollows stories on FFN to read. :) __ Also, just to warn you, this is my last week of vacation before classes start up again, so expect that the rapid updating will probably slow down in a bit.  
><em>

**In Which Evie Acquires An Unexpected Nemesis  
><strong>

Waking up the next day sucked. But once I was aware enough to trigger a healing curse, it got exponentially easier. Happily, healing curses also take care of hangovers- unless, of course, you were hung over when you set your password.

Something in the previous day had been profoundly cathartic- meeting with a real friend, saying goodbye to Rachel, finally getting to cry. Finally admitting that I'd loved my demon. Satisfaction at having forced Al into expressing mutual grief. Perhaps even the petty drunken destruction had helped a little, immature as it was. The fog of numbness had begun to clear, thoughts began to flow less sluggishly. Only seven days had passed since the course of my life had deviated so abruptly. For the first time, a shining little glimmer of hope was barely visible on the horizon. I'd been buried under grief and guilt before. It was time to begin the slow slog out of the mire and start finding somewhere to rebuild.

As I stood before the mirror, brushing my short hair into order, I tried to isolate the new sense of unease that was prickling in my stomach. Did I fear Al's wrath? No more than usual. So what was it? What wasn't right, plucking at my subconscious mind so distractingly? I stared at my own reflection, eyes automatically jumping to the unblemished skin of my cheek. My fingers gave the area a soft rub. Did I want it back? Did it matter, now that Ash was gone?

Tears welled as I asked myself the question.

The difficulty wasn't finding the knife. Al had way too many of them. The difficulty was finding the guts to actually cut myself. Despite all I'd been through, my skin and stomach crawled at the thought. Let's face it. I'm a wimp.

Al startled me by clearing his throat. Posed as I was, I was fortunate I didn't lose an eye. His red eyes didn't miss a single detail, though he didn't say a word when he approached and plucked the knife from my clenched fingers. Looking at it thoughtfully, he said, "It's time. Pierce has prepared the curse."

"What curse?" I asked, then remembered, and gulped. I was getting a new familiar. He wasn't my first choice for a familiar, but then, my first choice was no longer an option. "Oh. Right." But I'd forgotten how to move.

After a moment, Al sighed with irritation, taking my chin in his hand and making a swift cut on my face before fear even had a chance to make me flinch. "Never let it be said that Algaliarept refused to indulge anyone's penchant for pain," he drawled, though the blade was sharp enough that I felt little more than the chill of the steel and the warmth of the blood, before he healed it.

He'd even managed to place it correctly. "Thank you."

His eyes met mine briefly, then slid away as he took out a handkerchief and wiped my cheek clean. "You're such an odd little duck," he replied, and that was all the apology for his horrid behavior the previous night that I would ever get. "Come."

As we settled down to do the curse together, I couldn't stop stealing glances at him. Al's face was grim, determined, and empty of emotion, even petty villainy. He'd scared the daylights out of me with his clumsy, spontaneous seduction attempt, though I could sense that the worlds would collide before he stooped to that again. In fact, I got the sense that his silence was more morning-after regret at his own behavior rather than anger at my rejection. He hadn't really wanted me anyway. If he had, he probably would have succeeded. He knew me well enough to know exactly which buttons to push.

I was getting a good sense of what made him tick, as well. Al and I would never be lovers, or even close friends. Being his student was, so far, pretty awful. But given the choice, I would stay with him. Al knew my soul- and didn't find me foul, or awful, or damaged beyond forbearance. There was something comforting in that pure acceptance, of knowing that someone already knew your ugliest thoughts and your unkindest deeds, and didn't find them the slightest bit off-putting (if they even thought of them at all. If anything, Al found me painfully innocent and mundane.) Even Ash had never delved that far inside my psyche- and I would have been terrified to let him. And trusting any other demon was right out- Al was safe precisely because he wasn't interested in the kind of ownership that any other demon in the Ever After would have jumped at.

Or so I'd thought. Did I still trust Al, after last night?

Well... no, I'd never trusted him. However..._Rachel_ had trusted him, and I trusted her. She'd seen a better person under the arrogant, sadistic shell he wore. Among his confessions the previous night was his annoyance at her high expectations for her lovers and friends. Unspoken was his fear that he simply hadn't measured up. Perhaps last night had been about proving to himself that he never could, that it had all been pointless.

This was my last chance to back out of the whole thing. After this ritual, I'd be bound to him for the duration of my training. Why was I doing this? Why had this seemed like a good idea, back when I'd made that deal with Al? Again, it all came back to the same person_: he'd been doing it for Rachel._

So why was he doing it _now_?

Al had a fancy little ritual for this process, a process Ash had done entirely without fanfare in the long hours he'd spend putting my soul together. Al, of course, liked watching his victims squirm.

Everything went wrong right about the time I had to step on a mirror, to siphon off my aura. "Al, is it supposed to hurt so bad?" I gasped, shuddering. I was making the proper motions, but it was like peeling off a scab, leaving strips of raw agony behind. It was more than physical, it was emotional pain, like the creeping agony of watching someone you loved descending into madness.

"Stop resisting," he said, as if he'd expected this.

"I'm _not_!" I protested. I groaned again as another shred fell away, tears prickling my eyes. "It doesn't _want_ to go."

"Nonsense."

"I can't do this." I was feeling cold, exposed...and mentally, it was as if I were doing something morally repulsive. Like I was surrounded by the cold shade of Ash's ghost, and I was exorcising it from my memory. "I want to stop."

"It's enough," Al said, indicating I should step off the mirror. I did so, holding myself upright by sheer force of will as Al tipped the mirror into the vat of transfer medium. My skin crawled with the awful sensation of being spiritually bared to the world, even if Al had drawn a protective circle around us both. It was worse than actual nudity, and if Al hadn't already learned my soul through and through, I'd have shriveled up from pure embarrassment. I forced out the words of the curse after Al recited them, and when he plunged his hands into the vat to transfer my aura to his, the world literally went scarlet. I blinked back tears as the blood-red haze clouded my vision. Even Al made a noise of discomfort as energies crackled around his hands.

"What's happening?" I asked, as my body was wracked with sharp shocks of pain. "This isn't right, is it?"

"Resistance," he replied through gritted teeth. He recited the Latin incantation again, beads of sweat dotting his forehead. "Push through it."

"I'm not..." My gasp became a sudden shriek. The tension around us tightened its grip on my chest, dug claws in my psyche. It was malevolent. It was _red_. A sudden, terrible suspicion seized my heart, and I fought to halt the curse. Therese suddenly awoke, clawing her way to the surface, fighting with all her might against the silver that bound her, but she wasn't fast enough. "No! Al, stop it! Stop the curse!"

The tension stretched taut and snapped. I reeled away from the table, falling, as my aura returned and the odd scarlet sensations suddenly ceased abruptly. I stared in open-mouthed horror at Al, who leaned over the vat, out of breath. "It's done." He was still staring into the transfer medium, haunted eyes reflecting the unearthly glow still foaming from the spent transfer medium. His hands were trembling, and he looked like he wanted to vomit. Was he reacting to my aura, seeping its way around and through him, or the magnitude of what he'd just done? Because he had to know what had just happened.

The churning in my gut became more insistent, until it punched through my nausea and signaled my imminent summoning. Who'd be summoning me? Why now? My mind shied away from the obvious answer. No. It wasn't possible.

I sneezed, but Al didn't give me a glance. "Go," he said, eyes and voice remote, and turned away.

I went.

And when my eyes fell on my summoner, I felt the world screech to a halt.

"Hello, love. Miss me?" Ash asked sarcastically. The bitter, acrid winds of the surface of the Ever After lifted his amber hair, mussing it artfully in the sickly sunlight. He looked fine. Alive. Real. Solid.

Impossible. Suspicion slammed my heart back down from the great leap it had initiated. "Ash is dead. You're someone else, fucking with me." I knew the words were false the moment they left my lips, but my mouth wouldn't stop denying it. "Devi? This isn't funny in the slightest."

"Nobody's laughing, love." He wore his most placid smile, the one he hid behind when he was in the grips of a very powerful passion. His scent wrapped around me, under the stink of burnt amber, and my heart began to stutter with confusion. Could demons mimic a scent, too? My mark was on his chest, I could see it through the open shirt he wore. I reached out with my senses, finding nothing- but that could also have been the charmed silver I was wearing.

"How?" How was it possible? My mind floundered in bewilderment, trying to comprehend how this could be. "How? Al said-"

"Ah, yes. _Al._ So you went through with it, did you?" He was still looking placid, pleasantly congenial, but there was a palpable air of menace that surrounded him, and it was entirely focused on me. It was nothing like predator and prey. It was cold, devoid of anything other than contempt.

"Went through with…" My face blanched. I knew why he'd summoned me. He'd felt the familiar bond snap. He'd fought to hold onto it, and Al and I had overcome it. "Oh, God, Ash, I thought you were dead! Al told me you were dead!" My voice rose to a hysterical pitch. It was suddenly imperative that he understand. "I checked. I called you! I looked for you! The bonds. _They weren't there!_"

Ash raised an eyebrow, unmoved. He caught my wrist and examined the silver bracelets I wore. "Hard to see with blinders on. How hard were you looking…?" He dropped my wrist as if it were tainted. "I see now why _I_ couldn't find _you_."

"I thought you were dead!" I tried again, panic in my voice. "Ash, I knew you'd be angry-"

He laughed. "Angry? Yeah. I'm a little _angry_. Downright _peeved_, even." His eyes went distant, then searched the dead landscape around us. "Odd that he didn't accompany you. But then, he's your familiar now. You have only to call, and he'll hear you."

I stared at him, openmouthed. "Ash...I tried to stop it the second I realized I still had your aura, I swear. I would never..." My face seemed too numb to form the words I needed to say, and they weren't tumbling out nearly fast enough. There weren't words enough to justify this betrayal, I knew. What had gone wrong? _How could he be alive and I not know it?_

"Oh, I understand," Ash said. No reaction from him, none at all. It was a very, very bad sign. He'd always been paranoid of me turning on him, and clearly this had sent him far down that path. "I saw this coming long ago. I should have acted when you made the deal with Al, but you set me an expert snare, goading me into binding you." He smiled benevolently at me. "Well played, by the way."

Any elation I'd felt on discovering he was alive had now dissolved into an even more terrible dread. "Ash," I said, voice breaking. He couldn't do this to me. He had to listen! "I wasn't playing."

"No. I don't think you were. It makes your betrayal so much more…exquisite." He traced a finger along the scar on my cheek in a parody of tender feeling. "My cold, practical Evie. I never suspected you had such ice in your veins.

It hurt worse than a slap. I fought for the words, but even my voice failed. _Why didn't you summon me? Why did you let me think you were dead? _ I wanted to grab him, to shake him, to pound him into jelly so he'd stop talking and listen. If he'd just get mad, rant, rave at me, at least I'd know there was something to be salvaged. But Therese suddenly rose to the surface, tired of pleading for understanding. "Cold? Who's the one who swore blind he'd never let me go? With the sun on the bones and all that shit?"

His façade vanished in a heartbeat and he had me by the throat before I could blink. And he was squeezing, hard. I struggled as my vision began to dim. "You. _Renounced._ Me."

By giving my body and soul to Al to save his ass, even temporarily, Ash thought I'd renounced him? I knew he'd be furious, but to reject me so completely? Therese broke his grip with a technique Al had taught us, using her enhanced strength to shove him back. "I saved your life!" I cried, furious. This couldn't be happening. Why wouldn't he listen? Why did he have to be so damned possessive? What the hell was wrong with him? "You'd rather I let the sun steal your soul? You'd rather you died your final death?" I shouted. "Tell me! Was I _supposed_ to let you die?"

Ash just stared at me, shuddering with the effort of restraining himself from further violence. It was an impossible question. How could he admit how deeply I'd wounded him? His voice was eerily lifeless when he finally replied, "You should have. Because now I live only for vengeance." He smiled, and it was the same smile I'd seen him use when I was sixteen, right before he'd made an example of Greg. And I realized what he'd do. Ash knew better than anyone the one thing that was guaranteed to destroy me. After all, he'd threatened to do it before. "Good bye, love."

"Don't," I said, feeling the chill of the Ever After wind suddenly freezing against my skin. "Don't do it." But Ash had vanished into mist before I'd even finished speaking.

Panting with sudden terror, I tried to jump to the underground rooms we'd once shared, but with the damned bracelets on, I couldn't even return to Al's lodgings. What other options did I have? Al wouldn't help me- he wouldn't think it worth his time. If I were going to stop Ash, he wasn't the one I needed to talk to anyway. I'd probably end up paying for it in blood, but what the hell?

For the first time ever, I shut my eyes and sent out a mental plea to Newt for help.

* * *

><p>Within Temptation's<em> "What Have You Done" <em>(paraphrased a bit to cut redundancy)_  
><em>

_Would you mind if I hurt you?  
>Understand that I need to<br>Wish I had other choices  
>Than to hurt the one I love<em>

_I know I'd better stop trying  
>You know that there's no denying<br>I won't show mercy on you now_

_I know I should stop believing  
>I know that there's no retrieving<br>It's over now_

_Would you mind if I killed you?  
>Would you mind if I tried to? Cause you have<br>Turned into my worst enemy  
>You carry hate that I don't feel<br>It's over now  
><em>

_What have you done now?_

_I've been waiting for someone like you  
>But now you are slipping away...<br>Why? Why does Fate make us suffer?  
>There's a curse between us<br>Between me and you_

_I will not fall  
>Won't let it go<br>We will be free  
>When it ends<em>


	6. Uncomfortably Numb

_Anyone read Stacia Kane's _Downside_ novels? That woman is a Master of romantic angst. I am in awe of her talent. I am now inspired. *wicked grin*  
><em>

**In Which Evie Chats with Doctor Newt**

As I waited for her response, the enormity of what had just happened hammering at my soul until the void within me grew more desolate than the desecrated landscape about me. The shattered earth mirrored my shattered heart. The stinking wind and bitter chill swept through me, scouring my psyche until nothing but bleak winter remained. The scar on my cheek was a line of frost, throbbing in time with my racing heart. I'd only been this cold once before, the day my life had ended the first time. Now here I was, shuddering in Hell's wasteland, my heart ravaged again by the same fucking demon.

I thought I'd been numb when Ash was dead. Now I knew what numbness was. My life was fated to end in ice, not fire.

"What?" Newt asked from behind me, and my heart tried to blast its way out of my throat.

_Pull yourself together!_ I'd spun to face her before I'd thought to wipe the treacherous tears from my face, reaching up to do so, then halting the motion, then wrapping my arms about my shivering body in surrender to the fear and cold. No point hiding my misery- a blind toddler could have read me like a picture book in primary colors.

But there was still room for more terror, I found out, when I saw what she carried. She wasn't holding her staff, but she did have a really, really frightening bundle of black obsidian knives that she held in the crook of her arm like a sheaf of wheat. A _bundle_. Of _knives_. Her other hand held her floppy hat to her head against the wind. "I'm just in the middle of something," she said impatiently. "What do you want?"

"Bargain." Newt still scared the spit out of me, even when she didn't pop up like that. Newt toting a murder of creepy crow-black knives…? _Not_ reassuring. "Please?"

Newt's eyebrows rose as she cocked her head. "Really…? What do you have to offer?" Her hair was longer than I'd ever seen it, sort of a mousy brown-blonde, and her skin was the palest of whites, nearly colorless in the sickly light but for the blue-black veins hiding beneath like eels. Her black eyes took in the blasted landscape and bitter wind. "And what are you doing out here, anyway?"

"I…" _Me, offer? Ok, didn't think that far ahead._ Not thinking at all, what with watching Ash-Is-Alive tumbling around and around in my psyche like someone's drying laundry. "Did _you_ know Ash was alive?" I asked instead, unable to keep the accusation out of my voice.

Now Newt's face wore an expression of bewilderment. "Why wouldn't he be?" She squinted, scanning the distant crooked trees as if the demon roster were printed there. "Hmm, no, everyone's still here." Her face fell, eyes closing for a moment in pain. "Except Rachel."

So everyone had known except me. Fucking Algaliarept! No wonder I was confined to quarters! His pseudo-sympathetic drunk-fest last night was all the more insulting. My "Enlightened One" or not, I was _so_ going to kick his ass when I got back home.

_Home._ God. My heart gave such a sharp wrench that I thought it must have torn loose. Ash was alive. He had to have known I'd go to Al. Where else would I have gone? His rooms? Ok, technically they were mine, but without Ash, they were nothing more than empty, meaningless caverns full of the detritus of the depraved life he'd lived, the life I'd never wanted to look too deeply into for fear of what I'd see. No, he had to have known. He hadn't been looking. He'd been too angry to come find me. Or he didn't really care about anything other than his wounded pride, all his fancy words of commitment be damned. My heart shriveled up a little tighter.

Newt must have seen the pain on my face. "You and your lover had a falling out?" she asked, delighted. "You must tell me all about it."

Hearing about the same old guys hooking up and falling out must get old after a couple dozen centuries- if they hooked up at all anymore. My tempestuous relationship with Ash would be a positive soap opera to the old biddies of the Ever After. I was about to snap something pithy about her nose and my business, but I remembered in time that I was supposed to be sweet-talking her into a favor, to keep Ash from destroying my only reason left to soldier on. I still couldn't keep the contempt out of my voice, however. "Not much to tell. Misunderstanding. He's out for vengeance."

"Really…? Poor dear," Newt said, her false solicitude only a thin veneer over her growing anticipation of me owing her a nice fat favor. "What is it you want? Protection from Ashmedai? A place to stay? Your own revenge?"

If I hadn't seen Newt's softer side once or twice, hadn't been looking for a way to try to reach out to her….well, no. Who am I kidding? I probably would have begged her for this favor anyway. "The two other souls you have. My friends from long ago. Do you still have them?" My heart lifted a little when she nodded. "Will you protect them from Ash? He's pissed off at me, and that's the best way he has to hurt me." My wily inner trader began to beat her head on the wall in disgust, but it wasn't like Newt didn't already _know_ what I'd just confirmed. Right?

"That's it…?" Newt looked like she'd signed up for swimming lessons and had just been lead to the inflatable kiddie pool. "That's all? That's nothing!"

"Well…yeah. Unless you know where the fourth soul is? And can get him before Ash does?"

"_Her_. And yes, I believe I can." Newt regarded me her with inscrutable inky dark eyes. Even the glare of the sun didn't reflect from the endless night of her gaze, which still managed to creep me out. Did she make her eyes like that on purpose? _ Too much smut, _Ash had said once.

I braced myself for the worst. "All right, what do you want…?" She'd want a mark, wouldn't she? Or an immediate favor that would be at the very least distasteful and awkward? No, with my luck she'd want something I couldn't bear to do or give up, and then it'd be rocks and hard places for the rest of my endless existence here…

She appeared to notice my convulsive shivering for the first time. Colorful metaphors about the ice in my soul and the clammy-cold fear in my heart aside, it really was fucking _freezing _out here. "Step into my parlor," she replied, taking my arm gently. "And if you mention Hope, I'll feed you to my guest."

"Wait…what?" But upon seeing her guest I understood, and was flat against the wall in a blink, still shaking from cold and terror. "You!"

Ku'Sox slouched in the corner like a kid who'd been banished there for misbehavior. His grey-eyed once-over made my skin crawl, and his sullen glare turned into a very nasty smile. "Oooh, is it snack time already?" But he wilted under the look Newt turned on him.

"I think you've had enough for now, pet," Newt replied, tossing the bundle of knives onto a table.

"W-what's he doing here?"

"I'm afraid he ate something that does not agree with him," Newt said, and Ku'Sox cackled. I saw nothing funny about his position. He wore bracelets like mine. Anklets, too. Chained together. Chained to the wall. This demon was not going anywhere for awhile, nor would he be doing much in the way of magic. It didn't make me any less terrified of him. Ku'Sox frightened me more than Newt- though perhaps that was only because I'd never actually _seen_ Newt do anything really violent and crazy.

Then I added "middle of" together with "ate something," factored in the knives and chains, multiplied by Newt…and my stomach decided I'd just divided by zero. It certainly derailed whatever I was about to say. All that came out of my mouth was a creaky, "What….did he…eat?"

Newt selected a nice thin little blade, the size of a scalpel. Every eye in the room was fixed on the finger she tested with it. "A key. What were we just speaking of?"

"We…ahh…" Stammering, I tried to remember. _ Something important, yes? _ But she'd cut herself and the little rivulet of too-black blood glinted starkly on her too-white skin. _Holy shit, surely she's not going to just…_ "Can't you wait for it to, ah, you know, come out?"

"Could," she cooed, selecting another blade, this one wickedly curved. "Not going to. Was I about to teach you a curse? I know a very good one involving livers."

The corner of my eye caught the captive Ku'Sox hissing and writhing again, and I very nearly called for Al to get me the hell out of here, _pronto_. "N-no…souls. Protecting souls. And you getting Judy's soul. To protect them from Ash. Right? And you tell me what you want in return. _Before_ you, ah, get started on...that?"

Ku'Sox snickered at the unabashed pleading in my voice, even though it was his own innards being threatened. "Aw. She's even sweeter than Rachel. I like this one. Can I have her when you're done?"

"No." Newt didn't even glance his way, and her voice was calm, but I'd seen her fingers clench, seen her cut herself badly enough to have to heal the slices. "I'll do as you ask, Yvette. In return I require that you obtain Rachel's mark from Algaliarept."

I started. She must mean the mark of debt that Rachel had stuck on Hope. "Al has it? Why would Al have it?"

"She died owing Al a favor. Anyone who owed her, now owes him."

"Oh." _Well, shit._ "What if he won't sell it?" I asked. "Isn't there something else—"

"I _require_ that you obtain Rachel's mark," Newt said again. "Use whatever means you must. Seduce him if you have to, or ki-" She paused to stare at my sudden hilarity. _Me, seduce Al?_ I sobered quickly under her blank black gaze, remembering I was supposed to be bargaining with the crazy lady, not joining her in the crazy. Though right now I didn't think she looked crazy at all. She looked focused, together- and much moreso than usual, even if she'd forgotten for a moment what I'd asked.

"That includes Judy? All three of them? I still have Red, he'll be all right."

"Unless your mentor decides to swap him. What's yours is _his_, after all."

I chewed on this unwelcome news for a few moments, deciding that was another issue. "If I gave him back to you? _Temporarily…_?"

"Of course. I will return the soul of Russel Howard Redmond to you upon your request. I will protect the souls of your four friends from Ashmedai's wrath, until you tell me otherwise," she said formally.

_But not from Al's, Devi's, or anyone else's_. "And not give, sell, loan, or otherwise swap them to an agent of his?"

"As you wish," she said, gaze returning to the blade in her hand, a cruel smile curving her lips. I hoped it was directed at the knife and eagerness for the task before her, and not at getting the better of me in a deal. I was way too realistic to attribute it to admiration of my bargaining skills. "I will give you three days to retrieve the mark, or the deal is null."

"I can't sell you the mark when I get it." The shrewd trader in me gave me another slap upside the head. _Idiot. Wait until the deal is sealed!_

"I know, sweet. I ask only that you keep it in your possession, so that you may fulfill our original bargain."

"You remember that…?" I said, a little wonderingly. There was definitely something different about Newt. Faulty memory or not, the fog of confusion that had hung about her was gone.

"I admire your principles. I believe I had some, once." For the first time since I'd known her, Newt gave me a genuine, shy smile. "Don't tell anyone, but I think my new… _occupation_… has done me good."

"Warden?" Ku'Sox guessed, having listened in carefully on all of this with a scowl of disappointed confusion. "Zookeeper?"

Newt's smile turned feral again, and her wide black eyes glittered with malice. "_Surgeon_," she said, voice dripping with mad anticipation, three black knives in each hand. She began to pace toward Ku'Sox, creeping up on bare feet in the manner of a panther circling downed prey.

"OK, it's a deal- can I go home now?" I didn't care if I sounded like a little kid- that's pretty much how I was feeling right now, a little kid about to see the Closet Monster do bloody battle with He-Who-Hides-Under-The-Bed.

"Are you sure you don't want to stay for tea?" Newt asked, amused, and even in my squirming terror I felt room for astonishment. Was she actually _teasing_ me?

"Please?" Demon or not, I was happy to beg.

Newt's laughter followed me into the cold, familiar sensation of riding a ley line. Despite not having a body, I felt my stomach clench in dread. I'd made a reasonable bargain, hadn't I? I wasn't swapping souls or promising the moon. Her request was reasonable too, wasn't it…?

Right. That's where it all fell apart. If I couldn't buy the mark from Al, Newt would have the souls of the four people most likely to shatter me if they came to further harm, and could give them to whomever she liked. Including Ash. _So I guess beating Al into a pile of sticky demon pulp for keeping Ash's not-death a secret is off the table for now. No, now I have to sweet-talk or trick him instead. Ugh._

Unless…what had Newt said…?

_Seduce him if you have to, or…kill him?_

Al was my familiar now. If I killed him, would Hope's debt come to me?


	7. Al's Reasons

_Apologies for the wait, it's going to be a busy semester! This one's a bit of a long one, and I'm not totally satisfied with it, but I really liked Al at the end there. I want character growth, but nobody wants Al to turn into a woobie. (Well, Ash either.) Evie…well, she's still having trouble seeing past her own problems right now, but she'll get there soon…promise! _

**In Which Evie Hits Bottom, and Al Steps Up**

_Kill Al?_ The idea had barely formed when I dismissed it as impractical, unrealistic, and impossible. Besides, I still needed training. It wasn't like Ash would—

_Where am I?_

The room was dark, and the acrid stink contained far more than the usual burnt amber. It was burnt everything- hair, fabric, flesh and bone. And under it, an even more familiar scent.

_No. Please, no._

I spoke the charm that would light the eldritch globes throughout the room. Only one remained intact, but its sickly light confirmed my fears. Ash's trophy room. The Demon of Wrath had lived up to his name. He'd obliterated everything. My numb mind cataloged the damage, one mechanical snap shot after another. The leather couch, slashed and burnt. The china and porcelain, smashed. Artwork, slashed and defaced. Tapestries, shredded and befouled with some foul black substance that didn't warrant closer scrutiny.

The worst was the fur, the one near the fire on which we'd made love. Near as I could tell, he'd…brought it back to a semblance of life. It lay in a corner, shuddering and oozing blood and worse, and _it was still just a fur_, and I had to turn away before the sick horror bubbled out of me and splattered all over the floor.

Newt had done a fine job of distracting me from the weight of my grief, which made its return a far more crushing blow. Why had she sent me here? I guess I had said, "home," hadn't I? Petty cruelty or simple absent-mindedness on her part, it didn't matter. If Ash discovered me here, still shackled in my charmed silver cuffs, I'd soon be in the same state as the rest of the junk. I couldn't fool myself into thinking that anything I could say to him would make a difference. Not now. Not after seeing the contempt in his eyes.

He'd never trusted me, not really. What else would account for how he'd turned on me so completely? Everything he'd done, he'd done for his own gain. I was such a blind idiot to think that he was even capable of love, let alone that he could love _me_.

And that brought the darker whispers back, those I'd spent a lifetime drowning under alcohol and harsh study and a prickly persona that guaranteed isolation, as if it were _my choice_ instead of the inescapable truth. Who _but _a demon could ever love me?

Not _even_ a demon, apparently.

Frosty fingers of furious hatred began to claw into my heart through all the hurt, as Therese awoke. Vengeance. Bloody, icy vengeance. He was mine. I'd saved him, and he'd abandoned me for it. His life was mine, and I'd take it back.

_Enough,_ I told her, before she could really work me into a lather. _ Just…enough. I'm not going to kill him. Al either, even if he deserves it. I may be tainted and unfit in the eyes of the world, but I won't believe it of myself. _

_And I'm __**not**__ a killer._

Brave words. I wished I could believe that how the world saw me didn't matter to me. But it did. At that moment, I was even furious with Adrian, for dangling false hope before me. The world would never accept even a _good_ demon living among them, let alone one with a soul as blackened as mine had become. All the sidelong glances of my childhood, all the whispers, all the shame and despair and the new scars I bore…they would be worse, so much worse. There would be hatred, fear…contempt.

At least in the Ever After I'd have some value. But I could already see how I'd be tricked, deluded, flattered and used by those who called themselves allies. I would go mad as Newt, dealing with the empty viciousness of this place, probably whoring out my memories and my soul making tulpas to survive.

_Al_, I whispered silently, firing up the new familiar bond before loneliness and despair made me lie down in the rubble of my old life forever. Another hook tore at my wounded heart when I felt the comforting, warm link- with the foreign presence at the other end like a dash of icewater to the face. _Al. Bring me back._

He did. I melted back into existence in the library, where I found him slouched on the long couch, halfway through another bottle. Nice. I wonder what he needed liquid courage to face tonight- surely he wasn't guilty over his deception? _No. Not __**Al.**_ Earlier I'd have torn into him with reckless abandon. Empty as I felt now, I found it hard to claw back out of the swamp of sadness into the righteous fury this encounter called for. I just stared at him, watched him watching me, watched him take another drink. "So?"

"So."

"Well…? You going to tell me why?"

"Can't you guess?"

"I'm not sure I care. Take these things off. I'm done. I'm going home." I held out my shackles, though of course I knew he wouldn't release me any more than Ash would have.

"Don't be melodramatic."

"I'm not, Al. We're done. How did you think you'd get away with it?"

"I didn't expect to. I knew he'd contact you the moment the curse was complete."

I sat down, stumped. Al stared placidly back, as if he hadn't just stabbed me in the back with a dagger I'd loaned him. "Then why? What was the point? You just like fucking with me? Or maybe you just like fucking with Ash? Because you could? Because you hate me that much?"

He waved a hand. "Please. Hate you? I don't_ like_ you enough to hate you. Try again."

Normally I could deal with Al's cruelty, but at that moment his words cut a little too close to the infection that had begun to sicken my soul again. Summoning a modicum of pique, I reached out and snatched his bottle away, slamming it down on the table out of his reach. Tempting as it was to chug it down myself, I wasn't so far gone, not yet. "It doesn't matter, I'm fucking done with you. I'm serious, take these off. Or I'll roast you. _Familiar_."

Al didn't dignify that threat with anything more than an eye-twitch, though that was probably contempt rather than amusement. "You're not going anywhere. You have a reality to save first."

I blinked at him a few times, while my brain tried to parse that. "I have a _what_?"

"Rachel broke the Ever After."

"Wait, _what_? She…_broke_ it? How the hell does anyone _break_ an alternate reality_?"_

"She burned a ley line into reality. Energy's leaking out with every sunset. The Ever After is dying. We have decades, maybe less, before the place shrinks to nothing, as it was originally meant to do. Only it will suck _us_ down instead of the elves we meant to trap. Go on, say it," he added, rolling his eyes at my smirk.

"Sounds like poetic justice to me."

"Quite." Al steepled his fingers on his lap, though it took him two tries to align them properly. "Rachel can't fix it. _You_ have to."

"Like hell I do. Why should I give two shits about what happens to any of you? It's not my responsibility."

"So you _have_ renounced your demon, then…?"

_Ash._ Pain shocked through me…pain, outrage, and misery. Al knew exactly which button to push, didn't he? "You…you miserable, cruel, heartless son of a bitch." I wished I knew some better insults, wished I could say something that would grate his own heart just as wickedly. This whole misunderstanding was thanks to Ash thinking I'd forsaken him- how could I let him be _right_? "How could you? How _could _you? That is so fucking_ low_, Al."

"Yes," he said. "But effective."

I cursed him and grabbed the bottle off the table, intending to thwack him over the head, or at least toss the contents into his face. But it vanished from my fingers and reappeared in his hand. We grappled with it for an embarrassing moment. I was still unused to my enhanced strength, and ended up with glass in my fingers, again. Al got the lapful of bloody booze and broken bottle bits, though. We were both cursing now, though mine were half pain and half fury that I'd been so easily thwarted. I sat back down sullenly and picked the shards from my skin, but I wasn't about to use my last healing curse on something so minor.

_Asshole. Manipulative, heartless, soulless asshole_. God, I hated him. Therese glared from my eyes, and Al's lack of emotion only goaded her further. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't christen our new familiar bond by drawing a dozen fucking lines right through you, right now?" I asked in a low, deadly voice.

Al, freshly brushed and washed with a curse, raised an eyebrow. "I can give you three. First, because you _can't_." He indicated the charmed silver. "Second, because you _won't_. Third, to whom would you turn for training? Just try returning to reality, untrained. I pity the first mortal fool who angers you- or tries to bed you."

_Damn, damn, damn!_ I tried to slug him anyway, but he blocked the blow. Droplets of my blood spattered across his face and down his white lace. "I don't trust you. I will never trust you again. You can keep me here, but you can't force me to learn. Fuck the Ever After." I pulled my wrist, but he didn't let go. So I kicked his shin instead. "I tell you what: Let's all go down together. It's not me abandoning him if we all go down together!"

Al's face finally registered surprise. _Ha._ "What about Hope?" he asked, then winced when I kicked him again.

"Newt will send her home. Or not. What can I do about it? Point is, I don't care."

"You're a liar. I've seen your soul."

"Then look again, Al. Take a long careful look at it. I could have survived him being dead, mourning what could have been. But to have it shoved in my face that I was living a lie, that now he's out to destroy everything I am and love? Thanks to you and your little games? Don't you get it? _I don't care!_ If all I have to look forward to a lifetime stuck _here_, alone in this cesspit, whoring out my soul for everyone's amusement until I end up loonier than Newt, then fuck it! I should have blown us both up years ago back in Colorado. Saved everyone a hell of a lot of trouble. _Especially_ Rachel."

Finally, a dart struck home. Al's grip tightened on my arm, pressure that would have broken my unenhanced wrist a week ago. "Yvette," he said, warning clear in his growl.

"What?" It was all there, my barren future. In my mind, it was inescapable. What had even gotten me this far? Hope? Hardly. Rather, a determination not to let the demons of my past win the battle. Now…they won if I lived, they won if I fell, and the only possible respite I could see was a false dream of normality offered by a Coven I trusted about as far as I could throw. I was desperate, and furious. What's more, I wanted Al angry. I wanted him _murderously_ angry. "What, Al? She'd totally fucking agree with me! She—"

His arm barely moved, but I smacked the wall behind me with such force that the world went wavery and queasy for several long seconds. He rose, faced me with a blank expression that lied as loud as his words. "Enough."

"Not that _you _give a damn. What about last night, eh? Four days, and you're all ready to fuck another demoness. Rachel's not even in the_ ground_ yet!"

Al cursed me. He sent something black my way, something foul and sticky that clung to me, filling my mouth with filth and smut. Therese screamed, gouging her own skin as she tried to pry the damned bracelets off by force. Finding it was as futile as prying off my own arms, she reached for the familiar bond, pulling enough energy to power the counter-curse, then flinging the gates wide and reaching for a line through him. Al's eyes widened at the unfamiliar sensation, but his retaliation was swift and decisive. Fire poured through the bond instead, and I choked off the connection with another shriek. He was my familiar, but he was still in complete control.

As I wretched and spat and tried to clear my tongue of the hideous taste, he hit me with something else, something that filled me with such powerful nausea of the soul that I couldn't move, could barely breathe. It was hatred made into stagnant, trickling black ooze, befouling my spirit and blood alike. I fell limp, unable to overcome the queasy malaise that made my limbs heavy and sluggish. I had to try a few different counter curses to banish this one. Al had already dragged me to my feet and tossed me onto the couch before I had my wits back.

"If you ever say _her name_ to me again," he said in a just-barely-rational voice, knee digging into my stomach and hand glowing with a filthy yellow spell three inches in front of my nose, "I will slice you open in a hundred different places, and defile each cut with a different disease. I'll fuck up your nerves so that ice is fire and pleasure is pain, and beauty grates like broken glass. I'll loop your digestive tract so you'll have to shit where you eat."

I struggled to breathe, unable to reply, still furious even under the revulsion. I'd succeeded in pissing him off, but not enough to do me in. I had no doubt that he could and would do what he threatened. That last suggestion, though, gave me a mental image that was both horrifying and yet somehow so…_juvenile_. Honestly, _really_? It must have shown in my face, because his scowl turned even darker. But I guess the distraction was enough for him to recollect that he was supposed to be convincing me to stay here as his pupil. He eased up the pressure on my stomach, closing his eyes. I even saw his throat move during his subvocal counting to ten.

The moment had passed. Having my ass thoroughly handed to me- _again_- was sobering. I shook with reaction, helpless fury warring with humiliation and general embarrassment for making an ass of myself. "I'm still not staying. I'll never trust you again. You can curse me however much you want."

He sat back, hands clenching and unclenching, still unsteady and obviously regretting his loss of control. He hissed in exasperation, though whether it was directed at himself or at me getting blood all over his nice couch was unclear. "Why _did_ you trust me, anyway…?" he asked after an awkward silence. "It was foolish of you."

"Didn't. I trusted _her_." I wasn't sure if Al would make good on his threats, but I didn't want to find out just yet. "She…she saw a better person in you. You were training me for her. I thought…" I closed my eyes, tears prickling again at just how much of a stupid, stupid, _stupid_ fool I was.

Al didn't reply, he'd finished the sentence in his head. I'd thought he'd do right by her when she was alive, and so do right by me. And after she was gone, that he'd keep to his bargain and do right by me…to honor her memory? What a complete and utter idiot thing to think. I should have called off the deal the minute after I'd heard about her death. Should have bailed on this whole stupid business, tried to escape to reality.

"Let me go home," I said again. "I can't do this anymore."

"_What_ home?" he asked, though his voice lacked the bite of sarcasm. "You can't return to Ashmedai. You are a shunned witch in reality. Where would you go?"

_I don't know. I don't care. Anywhere but here._ "Al, why did you lie to me, really? Why go to all the trouble to make me think he was dead? I mean, hell, if you wanted me here without strings, why didn't you just let him die for real?"

"There's so few of us left. Anyway, that would have broken our deal. Can't have Newt getting all testy, can we?" I stared at him until his eyes slid aside. Al hadn't let him die. There had to be a reason, a real one. "And I _didn't_ lie. Ash _did _die," he insisted. "But I restored his link to the collective first. He came back. Somewhat worse for wear, but he survived."

And Ash had figured out instantly what deal I must have made to save him. And he came back furious with me, so furious that he didn't seek me out even if he knew where to find me—

I pulled my brain back on track. It still didn't make sense. "Why go through with the familiar curse, once Ra- once _she_ was gone? Why be _my_ familiar? Surely you don't expect me to believe this bullshit about me being able to do anything about the Ever After shrinking. Why not just tell me the deal was off, that Ash was alive? Why keep training me? Hell, why try to seduce me?"

"Why indeed," he said, staring morosely into the fire. Silence stretched as logs crackled faintly.

"Al…?" I prodded. Surely it was more than just Al in need of a distraction. Maybe he really had wanted to break us up out of spite and envy. It would explain a lot of his abuse, anyway.

"Good business."

_Of course. Business._ His former student had just been murdered. Al's reputation was at stake, and he had the last sane female stirring in his kitchen. I clenched my fists, then scowled at the pain in my hand. Once again, my lack of value as an actual _person_ was shoved in my face.

"It was the practical thing to do," he said, resettling himself in the chair furthest away from me. "Train you up. Bind you. Mates. All that shit. Before another demon could nab you."

_One demoness is as good as another, huh? So you got her drunk and tried to seduce her._ Nausea made my throat burn. How much of his drunken confession had been contrived to soften me up? How lovely. Only he'd done such a half-assed job of it. Not that I'd have accepted him, but still…a girl wanted to feel desirable. Al was doing a lovely job of taking every fucking insecurity I had and baking them into a big gaudy cake. "You couldn't do it. Even when you were completely shitfaced."

Al didn't answer, still wasn't even looking at me. God, I hated him. I hated him even more for having an ounce of decency, for being unable to go through with it. I hated myself for being so fucking gullible, that I had believed that somewhere in there, he had a modicum of respect for me, or at least my talent. Just one more blow to my already pulverized ego. I was so humiliated by everything I'd just learned, by my own weak judgment and my own stupid assumptions, that I just wanted to crawl into a dark room, lie down, and never wake up. Could I learn the curse demons used for sleeping? I wasn't tied to the collective yet. I could just sleep, and sleep, and sleep until I diminished into oblivion. I curled up into a ball around my bleeding hand, stubbornly not healing the damage so that my tears would have a more obvious source.

Minutes or hour later, I heard him sigh. "Rachel got to you, too," he said.

_Huh?_ Startled, I lifted my head to glance back at him. He was scowling, slouched nearly off the chair, looking deeply disturbed. "Stubborn little _canicula." _ I swallowed at the bitter emotion in his voice. "She even forgot she had the mark, in the end. Asked what _I_ wanted. God, those eyes. I knew what she needed. I saw it in her soul when I lifted her out of the tulpa she'd created. I couldn't say it. I should have said it."

Oh, God. I didn't want to hear this, but I couldn't get my brain to work again, let alone my mouth. I turned my face away again, wanting only to stop hearing, to stop feeling.

"Told her instead that she expected too much. That I wouldn't be the one to complete her."

"You chickened out," I said before my sense kicked in, half expecting they might be my last words.

His hiss held more than simple frustration. "Not entirely. She…I couldn't stop myself. I thought…if she…if we-"

I pieced it together from what he'd said the previous evening, the whole tragic scenario. Unable to put it into words, he had tried to show her his soul through a power pull. And Rachel, misunderstanding, had gotten pissed and drawn a line through him instead, forcing Newt to rescue him.

Then she'd left, hurt and angry…and Ku'Sox had killed her.

Fucking Algaliarept. I didn't want to know this. I did NOT want to know this. I turned my face away again, because if he saw me crying for him, for what he might have had with Rachel, he'd make good with his earlier threats.

He cleared his throat and stood, crossing to the sigil on the darker end of the library. It was purely to hide from the light, as he didn't need it to travel. "You, Yvette Therese Sinclaire, are as jaded and cynical as they come. But you trusted she was right about me, and that I would…protect her interests, out of more than just…practicality. The same foolish, unsurvivable trust she had, damn her. _Damn you both._" He cursed again, a frustrated, miserable sound in a voice heavy with loathing. Even Al couldn't come right out and say that he'd loved her, not even to himself, much less to me. Maybe he didn't. Maybe I was seeing way too much.

_I don't anymore,_ I wanted to say. _She was wrong._ The words caught in my throat, stuck tight. But it wasn't true. I didn't know what to believe now. I just wanted to escape. No wonder Newt took potions to forget.

Al dropped his folded arms and turned aside, hand absently running over the leather and parchment of the many, many books on his bookshelves. _I'm going to regret this_ was clear in his voice and stance. "Very well, Yvette Therese Sinclaire. If you want out of the deal, I'll let you out, on the condition that you take the night to think it over. But I'll only release you to another's tutelage. That means Dali- he's the only other demon possibly qualified to train you correctly. You're too valuable a resource to us to be left untrained. If you stay here, I'll…I'll try not to abuse your trust…any more than necessary."

My amazement- and skepticism- must have showed when I gawked at him. He huffed, as if this was a terrible imposition. "The key word here being _try,_" he added. "Not for you. For her." He shifted, glancing at the walls of the darkened room as if they would close in on us…as I guessed they would someday, if he were right about the Ever After shrinking. "If we're all to perish…you'll be our only legacy." His mouth twisted into a sneer. "Such as it is."

He vanished, leaving me stunned beyond belief. Had the specter of Rachel just shamed him into trying to be a better man, despite himself? _Holy shit._ Al wasn't lying, was he? God, I couldn't tell anymore. I couldn't trust him, and definitely couldn't trust my own judgment. How was I supposed to tell? He'd just played me like a fine instrument, stroking every weakness I had. Al was a master; he could make me doubt my own sanity without even trying.

I felt a creeping horror brewing in my stomach, filling my gut with a fresh wave of nausea. I was going to stay here, wasn't I? Because he was right, even if I escaped the Ever After, I would be a walking disaster now. Even the simplest ley lines spells behaved differently, now that the floodgates of my mind had been blown open. Did I really want to end up like Hope, ending innocent lives through inexperience and loss of control? And he was also right: I still had nowhere else to go. He'd seen to that, hadn't he? _Maybe I should talk to Dali. Yeah, right._ Al couldn't have been serious about letting me leave. If Dali took over my training, Al's reputation would be in ruins. He couldn't have meant it. Could he?

_What if he isn't lying? _

He couldn't possibly be sincere. Because if he were, it meant that of the two demons who most plagued my life, Al was the one who had taken the first reluctant step toward redemption. Because _Rachel_ was worth it- and she wasn't even _alive_ to give him hope. Whereas Ash…


	8. The First Step

**In Which Evie Tries to Start Healing**

_He's unreasonable, but there has to be a way to get through to him. Surely he'll see that I had no choice. Legally, I own him, I'm responsible for him. He'll see I had to do it. He'll come around. He's the one at fault, not me. He's totally overreacting. He needs to apologize to me, damn him. He's never taken _my_ feelings into account. _

I jerked my mind back onto the recipe at hand, added a pinch of hellebore to the new healing brew. I gritted my teeth against the constant stream of defensive justifications and indignant ranting rattling around my noggin, as my stomach churned with angry anxiety. This wasn't helping.

Not only that, the mental litany had run out of any _new_ arguments hours ago, and it was fucking _boring_ to listen to. I tried to clear my head.

_Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. _

I groaned as I lost count of my stirs again, thanks to the new unflattering rhythmic mantra. The throbbing in my palm wasn't helping, either. For a brief moment I thought about trying to salvage the healing curse, then remembered what Al had said might happen if I fucked it up.

"Mistress?" Pierce didn't look very good. I tried not to think about how else Al might have dealt with our conversation.

"Nothing. I just have to start over." I dumped the vat into the stocky little pot of saltwater Al kept for such occurrences before Pierce could offer to do it for me.

"Again?" Pierce knew better now than to ask to give me a hand, and continued his own chopping and stirring with only half an eye for his work- the other currently being swollen closed.

"_Yes,_ again." Snippier than I'd meant, but I couldn't help but think even Pierce thought me a fool for putting myself in this position. "I just can't concentrate."

Pierce just grunted and kept stirring.

"Pierce, do you know any way to contact those in reality? Specifically a Coven member? Some secret handshake or something?"

Pierce gave me a look that I hoped was amusement. "I'm afraid not, Evie."

"Shit." I glared at the stupid little caldron, on its stupid little tripod over the stupid little arcane flame, the one stupidly normal thing in my insane life. Until I could get in touch with Adrian, I had no real leads to follow to solve my elf problem. Until Al came back from his latest sulk, I had no resolution to the big problem of whether I was staying here, or the bigger problem of buying Rachel's mark. And until I could speak to Ash without being in danger of getting seriously maimed, I had no real way to solve the planetary problem that I was orbiting like a dying satellite.

Well, hell, maybe that was the answer. I had to talk to him. Maybe I should take my chances of getting maimed. I couldn't just leave it alone. I'd had folks hate me before- students, relatives, summoners, student relatives of summoners—but never someone I gave a damn about. Never someone I _loved_. Ash itched and burned and drilled hot holes in my concentration and my rest, leaving me useless for just about anything other than sitting around wasting potion ingredients.

_Idiot. Idiot. Idiot._

Pierce corrected me before I fucked up my fourth attempt, and I scared the shit out of both of us by slamming the knife three inches deep into the table. Blinking, I stared at it. Perhaps a little stroll was in order before I blew us both up? "I'll be in the conservatory."

"Al's there."

My foot froze a few inches above the screaming face. Suddenly I wasn't nearly as eager for a turn in the gardens. Every other room in Al's place was far too suffocating to serve as distraction. Wealthy as the demon was, his mansion was still a series of holes carved into the bedrock. Only the conservatory maintained an illusion of life and growth. Sorely as I needed such an illusion right now, the thought of facing Al felt like swallowing a hedgehog.

I took sanctuary in Al's meditation room, instead. He might have been a bastard with a Japanese fetish, but Al had taste. But even messing with his carefully combed sand garden and tossing stones into the little fountain couldn't distract me for long. It was too accurate a reflection of the disorder in my thoughts, the turmoil in my heart.

I'd_ hurt_ Ash.

It didn't matter how little I'd deserved his condemnation, or how unreasonable he was being, or how idiotic his overreaction was. I hadn't meant to piss him off. I didn't deserve how he'd reacted. Therese still seethed in self-righteous self-pity, vowing bloody vengeance, not that _that_ would help anything. My rational brain had spent every free moment composing elegant, eloquent arguments about how none of this could possibly be my fault. But nobody would look at what he'd done to his home and say that I hadn't devastated him.

_Fuck._

Nothing I'd said in our brief conversation had let him know how deeply I'd missed him.

Would he really have reacted with such contempt if he knew…that I'd begun to love him?

Squeezing my eyelids did nothing to stop the tears or the fear of what he'd do to me if he found out now. At least I could tell him I—

I _what_? _Yes, Yvette, tell the Demon of Wrath you're very sorry you hurt his feelings._

Was there a curse to get a hedgehog out of your stomach? Did the Ever After have a wise old Oracle to consult, perhaps? Heh. If they had, the Ever After probably wouldn't be the shithole it was, because the demons would have fucking known better.

His name was on my lips before I could stop it. "Kavias_hoo_!" Startled, I wiped my nose, identifying the tickle of an incoming call over the nausea of a summons. Adrian? I gritted my teeth, standing and brushing sand from the loose pants I was wearing. I guess Ash would have to wait a little bit longer.

It took me way too long to find Al's stupid mirror. Adrian sensed my distracted frustration._ Evie? Holy cow, are you OK? Your thoughts, they're like a flock of birds of something._

_Hey, Adrian. Oh, you know. Life in Hell. Never a dull moment. I found out-_ Therese leapt and landed on the thought before I could complete it, leaving a nice suspicious gap that of course Adrian picked right up on. _Nevermind. What's up?_

I hadn't expected Adrian's thought to go all cagey and worried, but they did. _You found out what?_

OK, lying to the one Coven member who had an ounce of sympathy for me? _Smooth move, Evie_. Besides, it's not like he wouldn't still see the filth of Ash's smut on my aura when I saw him again, wouldn't figure it out eventually. _Ash is alive._ _ He's pissed._

_Woah. Really? That's seriously…wow. Um. Yeah. OK. Are you all right? _

_Mostly…but…_ Why was Adrian _relieved_? Now I was completely confused. Not to mention suspicious. I gave him a mental side-eye. _And what did you think I found out, Mr. Coven?_

_Nothing, nothing! Oh, hell. I really need to summon you over here. It's really important. Is it safe or should I wait the hour or so until sunrise?_

Curiosity piqued, I gave it two second's thought. _Al's not around right now. We could set you up with a strong circle if you're really worried._

His thoughts went amused, full of a bright knowledge that I could see the edges of, but couldn't begin to guess. _I think we'll be just fine. I'll summon you in about ten minutes._

I wasn't expecting the Kalamack compound, but that's where I showed up…right in the conference room. Adrian was there, grinning at me and offering me a seat at the ridiculously long shining black table. Even more wonderful, he had a mug of coffee for me. I took the offering with a reverent sigh as I sat down, thanking him with my eyes as I inhaled the untainted aroma and sipped. Advantage of being a drug lord, I supposed. You can afford the best coffee.

"So what's the big deal?" I asked.

"You'll see in a minute," he replied.

Wrapped up in the bitter bliss of my cuppa joe, I decided I didn't mind the wait. I propped my head on my arm and sipped, grateful for this distraction.


	9. Trent's Plan

**In Which Evie Doesn't Know What She's Missing**

Startled, I jerked my head off the conference table. Wiping away some embarrassing drool, I stared at those seated around me. Trent. Ceri. Quen. Adrian. None of them looked the least bit surprised that I'd apparently dropped off right at the table. Amused, yes, but not annoyed or impatient.

"Feeling better?" Ceri asked solicitously, offering me a cup of steaming herbal tea. I looked around for my coffee, but apparently someone had made off with it. Dang! I'd only had a few sips!

"Uh. Yeah. I think." I rubbed my aching temples. Why did I feel so…heavy? Had I slept so long? "I haven't slept well in days." And I didn't feel like I'd slept particularly well just now, either. In fact, my body jittered like I'd drained an entire carafe of coffee rather than a few sips. I must have managed a really deep sleep- I hardly ever felt this shaky after a little nap. I tried to rub some tears back into my eyes, which were raw and burning. Come to think of it, my nose was stuffy, too- was I having some kind of allergic reaction to something in Trent's place?

"You're welcome to stay as long as Al lets you," the beautiful elf offered, though Trent shifted uncomfortably. It was the only sign of discomfort he showed, however. Adrian, on the other hand, was sitting on his hands, and his shoulders were turtled right up by his ears. He tried to relax when I looked at him, but he wasn't smiling. He looked miserable.

"What's wrong?" I asked him, concerned at more than just his silence. Something was very wrong, it was clear.

He just shook his head, lips tight. "Nothing—"

"Nothing that need concern you," Trent said smoothly. "The Coven and the elves have come to an understanding on a troubling issue."

_Understanding,_ _my ass._ "Adrian, they didn't threaten you, did they?"

Adrian gave a little jerk, sort of an aborted laugh. "No, Evie. Don't worry about it. Really. It's nothing. We should talk about the Hope thing- Al could call you back any minute."

I was far from convinced, but decided to let it go. "He's probably still sulking. How long did I sleep?" I sniffed, and Ceri passed me a tissue without comment.

"It's been about an hour."

"Shit! I'm not even supposed to need sleep anymore!" I stood up, stretched, and winced. Why did I feel like I'd been run over by a truck? The shoulder of the arm I'd been leaning on felt as sore as if I'd nearly wrenched it from its socket. I massaged it absently as I tried to shake the feeling that something was very, very wrong. What had I missed during my nap? "All right…but first—Adrian, you said you had good news for me?"

Adrian flushed an alarming shade of red and began to stammer out something unconvincing, but Trent put a hand on his arm. "I'm afraid it's not quite the good news he was promising. I have an idea of how to solve the problem of Hope and Ellasbeth, but it still requires knowing the exact wording of the deal between the Withons and this demon. However, what I'm proposing will also solve a rather long-standing debate in the elven community, as well, regarding our future actions."

My expression wasn't exactly full of comprehension, so much so that Ceri smiled and translated, "Trent and I want to end the war with the demons. Ellasbeth and her cronies want to continue it, and if Zaebos snatches her daughter, it will be all the excuse they need."

"You mean they'll go after the guys in the Ever After? All they need to do is bide their time, unless I can pull a miracle out of my ass and save it. Al seems to think I can, but _I _have no clue what to do about it."

Again, the four of them exchanged brief glances that set my shenanigan-o-meter on high alert. I felt too tired and headachy to deal with shenanigans right now. "Those in the Ever After may already be doomed, but I'm talking of far worse ramifications." Ceri leaned forward. "Yvette, you know they're already targeting you. But they won't stop with you and Lee. Once our numbers have grown, those who support Ellasbeth's point of view will want to remove even the possibility of a future threat to elven kind."

"Genocide against the witches," I said, feeling the blood drain from my face.

"Of course they'll have to start by destroying the Rosewood syndrome cure, and all who know of it," said Trent. "But all they need to do is get the news out that witches are stunted demons, and the humans, weres, and vampires will do it for them. Rachel's made the news, as have you and Hope. All it will take is a little nudge, perhaps some staged "demon" attacks, perhaps some slander against the Coven hinting at cover-ups, and—"

"Open season on witches, I get it. Trent, I know you're rich and powerful and all, but honestly, what could you do to stop them from doing any of this? Surely you're not going to kill them all off? Not your own people?"

"Of course not!" Trent looked affronted, even though Ceri was grinning in a bemused sort of way. "But there are a few ancient traditions I'm planning to call on."

"No offense, but tradition's usually the first thing to go when a race feels its existence is threatened," I said.

"These are backed up with wild magic," Ceri said, still smiling, though her eyes were bright with cunning. "Rather like the _Cŵn Annwn_. If Trent can accomplish what he proposes, they will be more than simply honor-bound to abide by any vows they make."

I felt my ears perk up a little. "Really. And what's he proposing?"

The elves hesitated. Adrian filled the gap. "He's going to steal her baby."

I stared at Adrian blankly, then at Tent and Ceri. "You're joking."

"No, it's true," Ceri insisted. "If Trent can infiltrate their compound undetected and kidnap the child, and escape alive, the transfer of custody is absolute by elven law. The baby will no longer be Ellasbeth's child, she'll be Trent's- legally, traditionally, in every sense that matters even to demon law. Therefore Zaebos will have no claim on her. _IF_ the wording of the contract doesn't already take this potential solution into account, of course."

Trent leaned forward, speaking earnestly. "We've been planning this move for months, but the disappearance of Hope has made it all the more urgent. You _must _get the exact wording of the deal. And it has to be soon- Ellasbeth will give birth within the week."

I kept staring, feeling a combination of intrigued and horrified. "Are you serious? That's…horrifying, actually." I thought of the ice princess I'd met, of how near she was to cracking under the strain of her terror for her child. I thought of everything Rachel had said about Trent. The words "Twinkie" and "cookie-maker" sprang to mind. "And you say_ you're_ going to do this?"

Now it was Trent's turn to redden around the ears. "He'll have help," Ceri said gently.

"Quen," I guessed, but Ceri's smile widened again.

"Jenks," she said. "Jenks has agreed to accompany him on his quest."

I blinked. A pixie and an elf walk into a nursery…it sounded like a really bad joke. But if the pixie had survived being Rachel and Ivy's partner, he must be tough as nails. "I don't understand, what gives _you _the right to do this? I've met Ellasbeth. You take her child and she'll loose her devil-dog curse on _you_ instead."

"It's his kid, too," Adrian supplied, his tone indicating he was still not entirely on board with this plan, either. "He's the father. Well, it's his DNA, anyway."

Ok, that was unexpected. I just gaped for a bit until Ceri rescued me. "Trent and Ellasbeth are among the last living pure-blooded elves. Their child will be the first true elf born free of the demon curse. You cannot imagine what she represents to us. If she's desecrated by demons…it will destroy us as a people. It will tip us into madness, from which there will be no possibility of recovery or mercy. We'll destroy the witches, every last vestige of our ancient enemies. Yvette, we can't let it happen. For the sake of the demons, the witches, and the elves, we can't let it happen!"

I found myself chewing on my lip, feeling sick. _ No pressure..._ Part of the sick was the sneaking suspicion that I was still missing something huge and obvious. I stared at her, but I knew Ceri was a consummate politician, just like Trent. Quen's face showed nothing, as always. Adrian still looked serious and miserable. "Guys, I'm already committed to helping Hope. I'll break the deal if I can. If I can't…you're honestly telling me this is the only way you've come up with to save this child? By kidnapping her away from her mother? I…I just can't condone that. I know how big a deal this is, but…"

Trent made a dismissive gesture. "Yvette, you don't understand. This is an elven custom. My family has been in negotiations with the Withons over this issue since the child was conceived. They've already placed the bounty, now that Ellabeth—"

"Wait, _bounty_?" Good lord, elves were fucking insane. "They're trying to kill you over this?"

"Oh, yes. It's part of the tradition." Ceri was totally nonchalant.

"It's regular old quest," Adrian said, though he sounded considerably less enthusiastic about the entire prospect. "He gets a sword and shield and a valiant steed. Ellasbeth sets the trials."

"Jenks shall be my sword," Trent said. "We're leaving within the hour."

"Valiant steed…?" _Is he planning to ride there the entire way? Dang, he'll be one saddle-sore elf by the time he gets to the West Coast._

"Road trip."

I stared at him, realizing I really didn't have a clue about this guy or what drove him. But he had risked his life to go to the Ever After with Rachel, for the DNA sample that would save Ceri's child and elfkind in the bargain. Of course he'd go on a damn-fool quest across the country to steal a baby- his own child- to save her from a demon. And elfkind in the bargain. I think my respect for him shot up about ten degrees. And my heart ached for Ellasbeth, even though I knew she had it in for demons and witches in general, and me in particular. Either way, she carried a child who would soon be taken from her. "OK," I said finally, trying to tear my sympathy away from a soon-to-be-bereaved mother. "I understand the urgency. I'm not too happy about this idea, but…" As my voice trailed off, I found myself staring at Adrian.

What was stopping Trent and Ceri from turning on us, the moment they got what they wanted? I mean, I'd already resigned myself to sinking or sailing with the demons in the Ever After, but for all their impassioned speeches about ending the war, neither Trent nor Ceri had mentioned restoring witches to their full power here in reality. They'd have a monopoly on powerful magic, once their numbers grew. Who was to say that they wouldn't turn on the witches, eventually? Adrian's miserable expression and the Coven's recent "new understanding" with the elves came back to me. "Adrian. Can we trust them?"

Adrian looked surprised, but his answer held no hesitation whatsoever. "Yes, definitely. Trent's proven himself to _me_, anyway. I trust him completely. It's Ellasbeth and her people I'm worried about."

Taken aback but pleased at his unhesitant, uncensored response, I sat back, making up my mind. "And Ellasbeth's going to be _totally cool_ with you making off with the baby…?"

"Of course not! But she cannot act against me or my family for three generations. It's a binding magical contract."

"Dude, your great-grandkids had better watch out, then. Ellasbeth doesn't seem like the type to forgive and forget. You say she's already put a bounty on your head...?" I glanced around at the room, suddenly feeling claustrophobic. "How good's your security?"

Ceri laughed as Trent bristled on Quen's behalf. "We're safe. She cannot act directly against his holdings."

I shook my head. We were discussing the kidnapping of an elven newborn as if Trent were simply going abroad to find enlightenment, all for the good of the species. "I think elves are even crazier than demons." I looked it all over in my head, decided I still disapproved of the plan in just about every way except one: the child would be better off in Trent's hands than in those of Zaebos. Anything was better than that. And I had no sure idea of success in either case- finding the original deal or breaking it. "And you're absolutely committed to NOT doing in the witches yourselves, in this or any other generation?"

OK, I might have been a smidge more PC about that, but none of the elves seemed to take offense. "We only want an end to the conflict. We've destroyed two brilliant civilizations. It's time to salvage and rebuild, or we'll all die, and we'll take everyone else with us."

How difficult it was to mistrust Ceri, when she spoke in such a clear, passionate voice, her green eyes alight with a plea for understanding! How could Al have abused and humiliated such a magnificent woman for a thousand years? Perhaps he hadn't been as awful to her as he had to me. I decided suddenly that I was tired of paranoia and suspicion. Ceri might be harboring deep, secret ambitions of betrayal and destruction in return for her years as a slave in the Ever After. But I really longed to believe in something, in someone.

At least if Ceri was lying to me, her husband was deadly enough that I'd never see him coming with the knife for my back.

Besides...Rachel had trusted her, trusted Quen. Maybe not Trent. But definitely Ceri and Quen.

"All right, I really hate this plan and think that magic or not, Ellasbeth will find someone to take it all out on. And that'll be _me_, because that's just my kind of luck lately. But Al's pretty sure we can deal with the curse she'll toss at me when things go pear-shaped for her." I reached out for Adrian, and he took my hand with a startled expression. "Adrian and I will find out what you need to know, as quickly as possible. Except…I'm really not sure where to start. I've already asked Zee and he's not talking. Hope doesn't know. There must be records in reality, somewhere. I assume you've already snooped around her family's business? Safety deposit boxes under assumed names and all that crap?"

"Of course we have. We're reasonably certain they were in the lab."

"Oh. Naturally." OK, we weren't getting much out of the ashes and trashed computers in that building, were we? "And there's no backups you can find? So we have to find someone else who knows. There has to be another witness somewhere. And we also need a way to communicate. I can't do shit with these bracelets on. You guys can summon me, and talk to me through the mirrors, but I can't reach you."

Adrian held out a handful of wooden disks. "It's all I could come up with. When you want to talk, just break one. They're linked to this one here." He pointed to a disk on a string around his wrist, like an anemic little sundial. "It turns red, and then I contact you as soon as I can." He demonstrated by snapping one, and immediately the charm on his wrist turned red and began to buzz.

Heh. Cute. It was a start anyway. I accepted the pile and shoved them into a pocket. "And you're sure they work across the lines?"

Adrian winced. "Check as soon as you get home, OK? I'll call you if I don't see it turn red and we'll…figure something else out."

I nodded, still reeling from this whole crazy scheme. I so did _not_ want to be involved in elven baby-snatching! But what Zee was up to was far worse. And the elves _had_ told me about it- I guess that meant they thought I was sort of trustworthy, maybe? Or just about the biggest sucker in the world, more likely. I gave up trying to work it all out- my own judgment had been called seriously into question lately. "Can you think of anything else we might have to go on? Anything fishy happening in the lab building the day Hope blew her top? Maybe lists of visitors who went in to the labs? Security cameras? The family who adopted Hope, do we know anything about them?"

"They were kept purposely ignorant of the details. We've checked. But we can get you you whatever security records are available."

"Damn!" I was no detective! What else was there? I wracked my sludgy, tired brains for something, anything else to pursue. "Are we certain Hope's real parents didn't know about any of this? They had to know_ something_- I mean, Zee knew them well enough to impersonate her mother's husband, at least three times. Zee's not exactly Oscar material these days. Who was summoning him? How did they arrange it so he could get to her? They must have been at least friends of the Withons or Dr. Fain."

Adrian's expression said that this wasn't a bad line of thought. "I'll look her up, if we can. At least we can get a record of all the children listed as dying from Rosewood in that county the year Hope was born."

Fortunately, for so many reasons, Rosewood was a very rare disorder. And families who lost multiple offspring were even more rare. "She had two other kids, two boys that also died, before Hope. That should help." I looked back at Trent, then Quen, who was taking notes. "Can you find her? We should at least make sure she wasn't in on the whole thing."

They nodded, Quen speaking into a little mouthpiece dangling from his ear. In the silence that followed, I became aware of two things: I was holding Adrian's hand very tightly and he was returning the grip. Secondly, the anxiety in my gut was building to critical levels, and would explode if I just sat there any longer. I really, _really_ needed to talk to Ash. "This could take a few hours, and there's some things I need to do. I have to make some pretty awful decisions about my future, and I have to talk to a demon who will probably try to crush me under his boot the second I open my mouth. I don't suppose any of you can get these things off?" I indicated my shackles. This was totally unacceptable. Wonky powers or not, being defenseless in reality was nerve-wracking. Being defenseless in front of Ash would be orders of magnitude worse.

They did give it a shot, but it was soon evident that only a demon could remove them. Not even Ceri could crack the curse on them. Peachy. I'd have to convince Al to get them off, which would be only slightly easier than convincing him to sell me a mark. Why was my life so freaking complicated?

I stood and stretched, rubbing my aching shoulder again. How was I supposed to get home? I suppose I could call Al, but…oh, hell, that was even more embarrassing than asking for help with the shackles. "Ah…I can't actually travel the lines yet. I don't suppose one of you could, uh, go ahead and banish me? I'd appreciate it."

It turned out they had to seal me into a circle first, before Adrian's banishment would take effect. It had to have been the most _apologetic_ demon-banishing in the history of summoning.


	10. An Olive Branch

_BTW, everything here about olive trees is true. At least according to Wikipedia. The red maple business, on the other hand- that's from personal experience. (Stupid maples.)_**  
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**In Which Evie Gets a Lesson in Demon Horticulture**

_Damn, I have got to learn how to travel the lines! _

Banishment wasn't anything like the gentle curses I brewed for the lazy-ass demons every week. I knew that curse by heart now, I'd just never thought to take one. _Well, that's going to change,_ I vowed, as I spat out foul-tasting dirt. Banishment had flung me roughly across the lines, then across the filthy field face first for nearly ten feet. I raised a brow at the Evie-sized groove I'd left in the dusty grass, and shivered in the cold wind.

I hated the surface of this place. The crumbling ruins of the rambling buildings of Trent's compound surrounded me, blazing and distorted by wavering heat shimmers that still didn't manage to warm the chilly air. It was deeply disconcerting, like a vision of Hell, and it stank of burnt amber and carrion.

Someday I'd have to ask Al what the hell they'd done to the place, to leave it such an ugly, scarred ruin. This sucked. I'd still have to ask Al to come and get me, wouldn't I?

A noise behind me made me freeze. Brick chunks tumbling down the side of a ruined building…which somehow managed to crumble before my eyes and, an eyeblink later, be restored even as the chunks smashed the ground. I shivered again, from more than the cold. This place was fucking with my head now—no, there it was again. Another shuffle, closer.

_Al! Bring me home?_

_What the hell are you doing out there? _

The summons was much gentler, enveloping me just as I saw a dark shape flit from one building to another. Surface dwellers. Who were they? Somehow I knew they wouldn't be friendly.

Al's conservatory was just beautiful. Bounded by stone, as was the domain of every demon, but it had an illusion of open air. It was a tulpa, created eons ago by a woman Al wouldn't talk about. The ancient memory was potent enough that the sun was warm and the breeze was soft and fragrant. Plants could grow here, although they had to be supplemented by potent magic on a regular basis—and that's what Al was up to today, apparently, since the breeze also carried the pervasive reek of demon magic in use. Still, I was almost used to the stink most of the time. It was especially harsh when one returned from a field trip in reality.

"_I can never decide if I love being on your side of the lines, or if I hate it…it hurts to leave, every damned time."_

_H__ope. I'd accused them all of being afraid even to hope for a reprieve from their exile. They'd been brought so low, for so long. "Things are changing, Ash," I said. "Even in the Ever After. Maybe for the better this time? I mean, there are probably more witches out there like Rachel and me."_

_His smile reached his eyes when he turned back, reaching out to take my arm and gently reeling me in. "Perhaps there are," he said quietly. "But not like you."_

_The kiss he pressed gently on my lips was almost chaste. _

Ash, the night in the forest. The night he'd seen my feelings, seen my shame at having them. What if he'd been sincere? I squeezed my eyes, head still pounding. I'd been so certain of my good sense in keeping him at a distance all this time. What if I'd been wrong? What if he'd been trying to reach out, in his own clumsy way, and I'd just been sitting here waiting for the betrayal?

How could I expect him to trust me, if I'd never shown any trust in him?

"So…?"

I lurched in surprise, then scowled for having let Al sneak up on me. He reached for me and I ducked away, still annoyed. "Al, for the love of Pete, just fucking _ask _me what happened, and I'll tell you!"

Al paused, hand still outstretched. His fingers clenched, but he lowered his hand. "All right, Yvette. Tell me, why you were rambling about on the surface?"

"I was banished there."

Al blinked. "By whom?"

I gave him the short version of the story, because if I were going to stay here and complete my training, he needed to know. It also reminded me that I was supposed to try out Adrian's charm. As I snapped the disk, I said, "Al, they'll summon me again when they have the information we asked for. I really need to_ not_ be crippled by these if I'm going to reality without you."

Al narrowed his eyes, eyes briefly faraway as he gauged the time and found it past sunrise in Ohio. "I dislike the thought of you running around in reality without me, student."

"Look, Al…I have to take care of this. If you don't want to have to deal with me being cursed by elves, you should let me. It's not like it will be dangerous. Ellasbeth is after Trent, not me, and the other players in this little drama are already dead."

"Not Zee."

I shivered. "OK, no, not Zee. But I shouldn't be crippled around _him_, either…right?"

"You aren't crippled. You can draw your power through me."

So I'd forgotten that part…but the thought of drawing a line through Al was now so repugnant that I winced. "Not in reality! That's my point!"

Al considered, arms folded, eyes calculating. But for once, it looked like a sincere kind of calculation instead of a how best to smack me down kind of calculation. He tipped his head as he regarded me. "And have you made your decision as to whether you will keep me as your mentor?"

"I…" Aw, hell. I couldn't lie to him, even now. "No, I haven't." Al lowered his face and gave me a wry, expectant smile. Of course. "You wouldn't be open to a bargain, would you?"

He grinned, showing off his perfect, blocky white teeth. "I'll tell you this much: Dali's methods involve much less freedom and a lot more pain than mine do. He certainly won't remove them for you."

I glanced at my feet, shaking my head. "Al, you know I don't want to go to Dali."

"Of course you don't. Trust me, as one who has undergone his tutelage, you don't. Not even to destroy my reputation."

I huffed at the thought. _Demons._ "Oh, come on, Al, I don't want to destroy your reputation."

"No?"

"Al!" He was so frustrating! He knew it, too. "Do you know what I want? I want just one person in this godforsaken place that I can trust not to screw me over, that's what I want. You want me to stay, you give me something- anything- to show me I can trust a fucking thing you say."

Al grimaced, arms still folded. "You know what you ask is impossible. Trust has to be earned. _Respect _has to be earned."

"Al? Seriously. What reason have I ever given you to think that you can't trust me?"

Al opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again, mouth hard and tight.

I stared at him for a long moment, thinking of everything I knew about him. He'd given me a secret or two, and I'd never used them against him. Only when we'd fought, and I still felt guilty for hitting below the belt, even if he'd been a bastard to me. "What? What is it? Let's have it out, right now. You've been a complete ass to me ever since we met, more than you needed to be, and I don't think it's about Colorado anymore. You've come close to killing me yesterday, against your own fucking interests. How do I know you won't go postal on me again? So what is it? I'm not even going to consider sticking around unless you tell me: _what the hell is your problem with me_?"

Al was silent for a long time, finally turning away from me to kneel by ancient, gnarled, olive tree. His fingers worked the dirt, rubbing magic into the crumbling earth like fertilizer, supplemented with a drop of two of his blood. I watched silently as he tended to the plant, which was set apart by a small, raised mound of earth. It was out of place, a tropical plant barely hanging on in a place too cheerless and cold, but Al's magic kept it green.

"Olive trees are stubborn," he said, after so long a silence that I'd just about given up. "They're slow to grow, but once they do, you can't kill them. You can hack one down, or set fire to it, but the roots will just send up another trunk." He placed a hand on the trunk of the tree as he stood, gazing at the bark. "They like blighted places. Give them a harsh dose of lime and a good drought, and they thrive. But if you pamper them, they tend to sicken and rot."

I did not know that about olive trees. I wasn't sure why I was getting a lecture on them. But I recognized stalling when I heard it. Or perhaps it was an imminent teacher-student analogy. I just waited.

"It's been nearly three thousand years, and this one still bears fruit." He reached up to point to a bright green fruit, touching it gently with a gloved finger. "But the one thing they can't bear is the cold shoulder. Abuse them all you like, just don't leave them in the cold."

I drew breath to speak, then let it go. This sounded like a really_ painful_ teacher-student analogy. The suspense was making me twitch.

"I had an arranged marriage. We all did. The concept of marrying someone you love is a modern invention, even for humans." His hand idly stroked a sturdy bough. "I'd met her twice before. Hard to recall a time when I _didn't_ know every single living demon, but this was long before the Ever After. It was for political reasons, but it turned out to be a good match. Trust, respect, desire…even in hearts as blighted as ours, love can grow. Slowly, so slowly…but we had all eternity."

No story in the Ever After had a happy ending. All those demon women, dead now but for Newt. And what did this have to do with me?

Al's eyes were fierce and bright when he fixed his gaze on my face. "You could be her daughter. Her sister. The way you stand, the way you tilt your head, even the look in your eyes, the night you almost gave yourself to me. Your auras…viridian. Vibrant with life. Your souls…you're an old soul, Yvette, like her. It's not a huge resemblance, but it's enough."

I felt cold and hot, shivery with surprise and dread, and not a little humiliation as I recalled the night he'd almost seduced me, months ago. At least the disturbed look on his face made more sense, now- as well as the traumatic expression he'd worn when my aura had coated him, seeped into and around him. This was so empathetically _not_ what I was expecting to hear. I took a long moment to rearrange the thoughts in my head. I reminded Al of his dead wife…? Good lord.

So…what, exactly? I reminded him of painful memories? He_ was_ jealous of me cavorting with Ash, after all? No, of course not. _Rachel._ It was always about Rachel. Al had finally decided to try to move on, to find another mate, and here I was, a constant reminder of a former love, long dead. I glanced at the olive tree, heavy with fruit and painful symbolism. An old, strong, enduring, still vital love. "Did she plant it?" I asked stupidly, not knowing what else was safe to say.

"No, I got it from a summoner." Al shook his head, denying that even now, he was speaking of this. "You're not her. I'm not an idiot. We don't reincarnate. But every time I'm caught off guard…" He didn't need to finish. I could see it pretty clearly. Drawn to me and repulsed by me and made freshly guilty every time he dropped his guard. It really was a wonder he _hadn't_ wiped me out by now.

He'd seen my humorless half-smile. "You wanted to know," he said simply. "I won't apologize."

"Of course you won't." I wanted to bang my head against that olive tree, hard. Emotionless, cruel, awful Al I could handle. Al who loved and mourned Rachel and felt the anguish of betraying a deep and unshaken love for a woman dead for thousands of years? _Damn, damn, damn._

He shifted, looking at the memory that caressed us with sweet breezes and kissed us with faint sunny warmth. Was it drawn from the soul of his wife? If it were, how could he have let himself sell it off to Ash, years ago? "There was power in simply speaking of it. I haven't spoken of her for thousands of years. I'll try not to let it rule me any longer."

"Al, for what it's worth…" I stopped my instinct of saying I was sorry, but was now lost for words. He'd just given me what I'd asked for, hadn't he? It was painful, brutal honesty. "…it's a nice tree," I finished, blushing at the total lameness of that statement. Because it wasn't a very nice-looking tree at all; it was gnarled and ugly.

Al burst out laughing, surprise mingled with pleasure. "Yes, it is. And perhaps I shall try to bum another off of the next idiot summoner. Perhaps one of those red-leaved Japanese maples. I hear they're fussy and impossible. I like a challenge."

"If you take these shackles off, I'll get you one." I felt like I was speaking in riddles, code words for concepts too painful to say directly. _All right. I'll keep you as my mentor. I'll mourn Rachel with you._ There was also a Monty Python skit waiting to happen here…_set me free and I'll get you your shrubbery_!

Al considered this, his gaze upon me frank and, for the first time I could recall, free of anger and contempt. He tilted his head at me, measuring, and finding ultimately that he was satisfied. "Yvette Therese Sinclaire, I believe we have reached an understanding."


	11. The Missing Mark

**In Which Marks and Scars Become Matters of Life and Death**

I took a deep breath at Al's words, letting it out slowly. "Have we?" I asked, catching and finding the hint of plaintiveness in my voice very annoying. As angry as I was at him, as much as he'd put my heart through the shredder in the past few days with his meddling between Ash and I…I really wanted him on my side.

For an answer he pulled off one of the silver bracelets, blew a whispered charm over it, and handed it back. He did the same to the other one, leaving me holding them with a befuddled expression. "I expect you to wear them at all times," he explained sternly. "They are for everyone's protection until you get your powers under your full control. You now have the ability to remove them, should you wish. You will explain yourself every time you do, and it had better be a life-or-death scenario or there will be some heavy consequences. Not the least of which will be your own damned guilt for blowing up innocent people. Are we clear?"

I nodded and slipped them back on, disliking the feeling of being cut off from the lines again, but much, much more sanguine about it. Ash's analogy to learning to drive still made a lot of sense. But my mind was already moving to the next matter on my to-do list: buying Rachel's mark from Al. I'd try to take care of that, then see if I had time to talk to Ash before Adrian summoned me back for a little detective work. I was feeling better, even cautiously optimistic about things.

I should have known better.

"Al…I have another favor to ask you. Would you sell me a mark?"

Al cocked his head. "A _mark_?" he asked, forehead crinkling with confusion. "You want ownership of a mark of debt?" he clarified, still looking dubious. I'd gone on and on about not swapping souls, after all. "Whose?"

"It's one that belonged to Rachel. When she marked Hope? Newt said that when she died, it reverted to you, as her mentor."

Al froze in place, then very deliberately slid off his glasses to fix me with a very, very intense stare. "You're telling me," he said, carefully, "that Rachel marked Hope? Impossible."

"No, she did. She didn't tell you? I was there. We both marked her. So did Newt."

Al's gaze flitted to the side as he made a mental search of some kind, then fixed back on me. "You're mistaken. The moment the database confirmed the death of her soul, it would have passed ownership of the mark to me. _And I have no mark of Rachel's_."

I stared back, confused. "But…she was your student. Newt said—"

"Newt is correct." There was something darker brewing in his eyes, and I found my stomach beginning to clench in a far too familiar sensation of fear. "Which is why you must be mistaken."

"Surely she wouldn't have…_sold_ it." _Not Rachel. She was even less likely to sell a mark than I am_.

"She would not have sold it," Al confirmed, and I was shocked to see that his eyes were darkening, going black, then black-on-black.

_Oh, shit._ "Hope still has the mark," I said. "Otherwise Newt wouldn't want me to buy it from you."

Al was still frozen in place, only his eyes and mouth moving silently as he worked something out. "_Pierce_!" he roared, face suddenly twisted with rage. "GORDIAN NATHANIAL PIERCE!"

Pierce appeared, looking startled, and I realized Al had simply pulled him from whatever task he'd been doing. Al had closed the distance between them and grabbed him by the neck in an eyeblink, faster than even my demon reflexes could see. The witch gave a choked cry of surprise, struggling in earnest to breathe. But Al pulled him close, then pinned him to the stone wall along the path.

"Little runt," Al growled, and it _was_ a growl, deep and throaty and vibrating. "You cried so prettily, you offered yourself up as a martyr to save the fucking elf. You told me you saw her soul dissolve into nothing, that you couldn't save her."

Pierce kicked, face going blue and eyes bulging, and I just stared, frozen in place. I felt like my world had suddenly been rocked to its foundations. "Al, stop," I said, voice thready with confusion. "Stop it, you're killing him!"

Al eased up with the bruising pressure, still deadly intent on his prey. I watched Pierce with wide eyes, waiting for him to deny, to explain. The witch coughed and choked, and under it all I was shocked to see the contempt in his blue eyes. His lip curled, and though he could probably have spoken, he said nothing, nothing at all.

"P-pierce?" I said, but the witch wouldn't look at me. His defiant eyes were fixed on Al, who got all the confirmation he needed from that one simple action.

In that moment, I knew Pierce was a dead man. I rushed forward, placing a hand on Al's arm, trying to stop him, distract him, bring a mote of reason back into those implacable black eyes. But Al was too deep in his fury to take heed, releasing the witch before backhanding me into a bed of herbs. But he'd only released the witch to put two steps of distance between them. He cursed Pierce with something terrible, and the witch's scream of agony was an obscene thing in this place of peace.

"Al, stop!" I shouted, rushing back again to try something, anything to save Pierce from Al's wrath. But that was a mistake, too.

"She_ lives_, doesn't she?" Al turned his face to me, the heat of his rage a palpable thing.

"How could it be possible? I saw her! She didn't have a soul!"

"How much did you know of this conspiracy, Yvette…?" Al asked, gripping my wrist with crushing power.

"What? Nothing!" I twisted, knowing he was beyond reason. I did not want him in my head at this moment, but he pushed and drove his way past my defenses. I yelped and fought him, which only drove him deeper into his fury and made him even less careful as he rummaged through my memories. "I'm telling you, I—"

"You saw her," Al said, his presence in my mind finding and ripping forth the memory of Rachel, the last time I'd seen her.

Rachel. Hospital bed. I.V. bag, amulet. No soul, no aura, beeping of electronic equipment.

I didn't remember this much detail, but Al enhanced it, focusing and scanning like an expert scientist at his microscope, ignoring my cries of protest and pain.

Ivy, Jenks. Rachel's pale face. Trent and Quen, bandaged.

Gargoyle. Asleep, clutching something as if it were the most precious thing in the world.

_A bottle._

And around Rachel's wrist, a slim silver bracelet. Elven design.

_Wild magic._

I heard the conclusion Al reached echoing through my own soul. "Oh my God," I said instead, going limp with confusion.

"How much do you know?" he rasped. "You were there yesterday. Talking to that fucking elf. How much—" He paused, quiet with a moment of discovery, analyzing something he'd found in my mind that I couldn't even see. "You bitch. _You treacherous fucking bitch!_"

_What the hell…?_ "Al, stop! I didn't know!" But Al was far past hearing anything now. He was on me, in me, ripping through one layer of memory after another like a man throwing clothing from drawers in a frantic search. I screamed, pleaded, begged him to stop. Not five minutes after we'd reached our truce, Al was killing me, and I couldn't stop him. I fought his presence in a blind panic as he tore and shredded his way through my mind looking for what he wanted, my screams sounding farther and farther away. In desperation, I called out to the only other person who might hear me, might help.

Al was suddenly gone, physically and mentally, and I collapsed into a bruised, throbbing heap at the base of the olive tree. Through the haze of a splitting headache, I heard the sounds of a down and dirty fight, male voices cursing and counter-cursing in between physical blows. I managed to crook a single finger and try to slip it under a bracelet. Al wouldn't catch me by surprise again. If he tried, I was going to fry him good and proper.

But it wasn't Al who seized me by the arm and hauled me against him, and it wasn't Al who spirited me away. And it wasn't Pierce, either.

"Ash," I whispered, as we rematerialized on the broken, windswept, desolate surface of the Ever After.

He'd come for me. Despite everything, he'd come.

Not that he was happy about it. Ash wasn't exactly being gentle, and the moment we were solid again he threw me against a crumbling wall, pinning me there with an arm to the chest. His own eyes smoldered with jealous rage, chest heaving as he regarded me without an ounce of pity in his eyes. "Bastard. You're mine. Not his. Mine." He loomed over me, teeth bared. "_Mine_ _to kill_."

I just gawked at him, open-mouthed and dazed, in too much mental agony to try to comprehend him. I watched, unmoving, as he raised a hand heavy with blackness. Ash was going to curse me. Ash was going to kill me. And I was too damned out of it to even try to talk him out of it. I just stared into his furious eyes, bewildered to the end.

But he hesitated, even through the rage, his eyes flicking again and again to the scar on my face. After an agonizingly endless moment, Ash dropped his shaking hand. "_Why_?" he asked, frustrated. "I've wracked my brains for days. _Tell me why_!"

Well, I'd wanted a chance to talk to Ash. I just hadn't expected it to be so soon, or to be so fucking painful. "To save you," I managed.

He did something that caused a starburst of torment behind my right eye, all the way down my throat and lungs to my right hip. I was almost too weak to scream properly, but I managed it. "_How_ had I failed you? _How _could you leave me there? _What did I do_?" he demanded. "Tell me why, so I can kill you and be done with it all!"

Not exactly Ash at his most convincing. But he wasn't the only one befuddled by the past week's turn of events. "What…the hell…are you talking about?" My mind was sweeping up the pieces and putting them in order, but it was slow going.

"You left me here to rot! Shredded me and abandoned me to _this_!" he indicated the blasted landscape, the endless destruction.

"No."

His features twisted in fury, and I could feel his body tense with his outrage. I was queasy and desperate with fear. The last time he'd been so beyond reason, he'd tried to rip my soul from my body. I'd been just as bewildered then, though now I knew why he'd done it- because I'd rejected him. And I'd done so again, or so he thought, but what the hell was he talking about? I blinked, hard, shuddering with cold and shock. This wasn't making any sense, and my stomach was about to empty itself all over him.

What had Al done while wearing my shape?

"Wrong answer, love," he growled, and his hand lit up again with a curse so black that I felt it twist the air itself with its foulness. "I grow ti—"

"Ash…you _know_ that it was Al who saved you…don't you?"

He froze, eyes narrowed. "It was daylight!" he protested, then stopped, eyes wide.

"You idiot!" Pleading with him wasn't going to work, but maybe insults would get through. "_Al _saved you! In _my_ body!" Al. That rat bastard. I was right back to hating him with every ounce of my soul.

Ash's face was terrible in its desperate confusion. "How…?" Did he even realize how much he was hurting me right now? I squirmed against his implacable anger, the grinding pressure of his arm against my chest pressing me painfully against broken stones. "You're lying."

"You ass! You think_ I_ knew how to bust you out of that curse? To reconnect you to the collective?" I demanded, watching as each word arrowed into his chest with an almost audible thud. The curse faded from Ash's hand, even as the strength faded from his grip and his face flooded with sudden, humiliating realization of having been Al's dupe. My body was shivering with more than just pain and cold. I'd kill him. I'd kill Al. He'd totally screwed us over. Just let me get my hands on him…!

Ash's other hand clutched my hair in a death-grip, face close as if he could read the truth in my eyes. Again, his gaze flicked to the scar, and the pain in his face tore my heart. "Yvette Therese Sinclaire, if you're lying to me—"

"He told me you were dead, Ash!" My voice broke, but I forced the words out anyway. "Ash, why didn't you come for me? Why didn't you come back? _Why didn't you fight for me?_"

Ash was shaking now, hand trembling harder with this new emotion than it had trembled before in rage. "Couldn't. Aura was shredded. Curses gone. Had to heal."

"Al left you here? On the surface?" Horror filled me. "Without your magic?"

"Couldn't even tap a fucking line. Only your aura made it bearable." His face was haunted with pain and misery. "And _unbearable_," he added, head falling forward, forehead against his arm across my chest. His entire body was jerking as if wracked with pain.

"All this time I thought you were dead, and you were out here, alone and trapped? _Thinking I'd forsaken you_?" The bitter wind sliced at the wet trails that tears had left on my cheeks. So cruel. Such exquisite cruelty, even if Al had known that Ash couldn't die. I'd misjudged Al. _Again._ Perhaps he _was_ inclined to destroy us, for any number of reasons including a totally irrational jealousy based on the resemblance he'd just told me about. "I'll kill him. I'm going to fucking rip him apart! Let me go, Ash!" I started struggling in earnest, the desire for vengeance filling me until no other feeling remained.

"Evie—"

"Take me to him!" Therese ripped off the stupid bracelets, filling my soul with power. For once, I agreed. I didn't care if I damned myself, I'd rip the Ever After apart stone by stone until I unearthed the little weasel and crushed him. "_Now!"_

Suddenly Ash was on me, lips devouring me, his warm body pressing me to the rough stones, and I was drinking him in, thoughtless and desperate as anyone dying of thirst. He pulled the power from me, venting my helpless rage into the air around us. Energy from my raw fury spit and crackled into the ether as Ash drew it away, replacing it with need, with hunger, with his scent and his passion. If any other demon had tried it, tried taming me in such a blatant, insolent way, I'd have roasted his soul without a second thought, but this was Ash.

_Mine. _

We fell in a tangle of limbs, heedless of the ruins about us. I was sobbing, huge wracking sobs that hurt worse than my headache, but were the most beautiful pains I'd ever felt. I wrapped myself in his warmth and held on, grasping his hair, sinking fingernails into his shoulders, locking my legs about his. I felt as if my entire body were reaching for him, my want was so great. The greedy strength of his arms, crushing me to him with rough caresses, spoke of his own desperate hunger. He thrust himself into my mind, taking advantage of my distraction to rifle through my recent memories, echoing the action in a far more physical way. My demon took me there, in the ruins, until the desolate surface of the Ever After rang with my screams and the sizzle of my leftover ire as my magic singed the air.

But even passion couldn't block out our hideously scarred surroundings, the filth and the stink of old magic and recent death, for long. Once we were spent and shaking, it quickly grew unbearable. "Ash, let's get out of here," I murmured finally, shivering with far more than just the arctic chill of the wind and stones.

"Yes," he said, then hesitated, possibly recalling what he'd done to our place. But after a moment, we rematerialized in his library. He sat on the leather couch, pulling me down with him. His arms trapped me against him, and I leaned on him. We were silent for a long time, the silence of shock and recovery after trauma, as we both tried to make sense of the convoluted turns our lives had just taken. His heartbeat thrummed reassuringly under my ear. I felt the hot tears slipping from my eyes, though inside I felt numbed and bruised. One question kept circling through my brain, unshakable even though I feared to break our silence, our temporary truce. The cruel curse between us wasn't entirely dissipated, not by a long shot. We had a long road ahead of us.

"You thought I'd abandoned you," I said finally. "Why didn't you kill me yesterday?"

"It was that fucking scar," Ash said softly, into my hair. His voice was quiet and bewildered, as he stroked a finger down my cheek. "I just couldn't understand how you could say all that shit to me, abandon me, take Al as your familiar…then have the temerity to pretend ignorance of the whole matter. I'd have smeared your molecules across the ether yesterday, but for the fact that _you still wore that scar."_


	12. Crossed Wires, Mixed Signals

_WOW, things are hectic. Ash and Evie have been constantly puttering around in my head, even as I write tests and grade papers and generally bustle around being all professorial. I have a span of a few days where I actually have some free time, though (FINALLY!), so expect another chapter soon._**  
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**In Which Things Are Most Definitely Not Back To Normal  
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I sat up when I started getting a cramp in my leg, and he released me. I gazed into his face, noting that the surface time had scoured his skin raw and red, and he hadn't healed himself. Of course he hadn't. Ash didn't have any stored curses left in him. Not that he was any less deadly for it- there were plenty of curses that didn't rely on pre-consumed potions, and he still knew them all. His exertions had left him bleeding from several scratches on his arm- no, not scratches. Clawmarks. There were others, less deep, scabbed over, that still had to be plenty painful.

"Surface demons?" I asked, and he nodded, eyes bright and hard. Ash's time on the surface hadn't left him any gentler, I could sense that much. He was wounded on more than just the physical level. "I've got a healing curse left- do you want it?"

He looked at his injuries, and shrugged. "I'll be fine," he said. He kept staring at me, a brittle, measuring stare that made me fear the flaws that he might be seeing. Was he looking at my aura, now entwined with Al's golden glow? Was he weighing all the ways I'd been unfaithful to him? I'd probably just insulted him by offering him a healing curse. Who knew what was in his head? I felt heat rising to my face, but didn't ask. There was still too much of a chasm between us, erasing the comfortable familiarity we'd shared before.

"Will you tell me what happened to you, after Nick kidnapped me?" I asked finally.

He turned off the spotlight and looked around the room instead. His eyes paused on the empty spot on the bookshelf, where Red's bottle had sat. When I'd moved in with Al, it was the only thing I'd taken with me. "You went to Newt when I left you, yesterday," he said, ignoring my question. "I heard you summon her. I figured you'd have her stick me in a bottle or something. You bargained for the safety of your friends, instead. I thought you'd given all that up."

"No," I said, amazed at how my voice didn't tremble. "Never."

He nodded, looking away again. "I hadn't even thought of them."

I blinked. Well, shit. I'd been feeling ever so clever for beating him to the punch, and he hadn't even begun to wind up yet. "Then what _were_ you planning on doing for your grand vengeance plan?"

Ash shrugged, for all the world like a boy with his hands in his pockets. It could have meant anything, but I couldn't detect any hint of the _wouldn't you like to know?_ vibe I expected. "What did you promise her?"

My forehead crinkled as I realized that now I was beholden to Newt for no really pressing reason. Or maybe they_ were _still in danger? I didn't know how to interpret Ash's tone of voice, and he _had_ threatened to do them all in at one point. "She wants me to buy Rachel's mark from Al…" The remembered sensation of Al forcing his way into my mind made me wince and curl in on myself, the magnitude of his betrayal, his pain. I'd let Al in before, unhappy as I'd been about it, but he'd never held me down and forced me. I shuddered, unable to suppress the whimper of disgust and hurt at the memory. Was it worse that I'd felt the magnitude of his rage and desperation, and could sympathize? I had never desired such intimacy, not with Al of all people. I could forgive him most of the abuse, but never this. It would be a long time before he earned an ounce of my trust back, if ever. I tried to push the memory from my mind, not wanting to let Therese pounce on the moment of weakness and work herself into a lather again. Heaven knew what she'd do when I let myself think about the second half of the betrayal- those who'd hidden Rachel away from us. Not to mention Rachel herself. I gritted my teeth. So much to angst over. So little time…

"He's trying to reach you," Ash said, and I glanced back at him, startled. "I'm blocking him."

"You can do…you're still in my head?" I asked. _Good lord, how did I let all this happen? How had I allowed not just one, but two demons access to my private mind?_

"Well, not _in_ it so much as lurking nearby. Since yesterday," he said. "Waiting." _Waiting for what? A way in? Gathering intel so he had good dirt to torment me with?_ "I was already on my way when you called me. Good thing, too, or he'd have done way more damage."

Should I have been relieved? His voice was so…empty, his face so blank. Was he still trying to figure out where he stood? Or how he felt? I hated when he looked so still and emotionless- usually it was because he was hiding a depth of emotion that would soon burst the dike and overwhelm us. He could at least have had the decency to look_ annoyed _at what Al had done. Or maybe he was plotting Al's demise in some slow, suitably demonic fashion. I just couldn't _tell _and it was driving me bonkers! "Thanks," I managed. "For getting me out of there, and blocking him. I just...can't deal with him right now."

"I know," he replied, the hint of a smirk quirking his lips. "He was about to be toast." Ash held up the silver bracelets he'd apparently salvaged from the surface when we'd left. "I admit, I nearly let you do it."

My face grew hot as humiliation warred with horror at just how close I'd come to seriously losing it. I'd given Therese free reign, and she'd nearly gone nova again. Ash had pretty much thrown himself on the grenade for Al, risking his own skin to distract me long enough to bring me down. It'd been close. Some of those burns on his skin might have been from me, I realized. I tried to chuckle, like it didn't matter, but my own complete loss of control was still too frightening. "Yeah. He owes you a hell of a favor."

Ash looked at his hands. "A life for a life," he said quietly. There were volumes in that simple phrase, volumes in another language that I couldn't begin to decipher.

"Ash…" _What's wrong? How do we fix this? How do we begin to heal again? _ I didn't know where to start.

He regarded me with raised brows, waiting for me to finish. There was an air of arrested hope, as if he were waiting for me to say the magic words. But I just felt the gulf between us seemed to widen even further for his lack of willingness to try to bridge it himself. He'd saved my life, saved Al's life—did that mean he still cared? Or was it self-serving in a way that I couldn't yet see? He was still keeping to his promise, I decided. Still claimed me as his. Just…it was all _weird_ now, and I was suddenly terrified of saying exactly the wrong thing.

The silence stretched between us. Finally I caved and asked what I needed to know. "What do I do? What do I do, now? He was supposed to be my mentor, but I can't—I just can't."

Ash snorted. "You'll stay _here_, of course. With me. But you'd already picked him as your teacher, long before all this happened. Deal with it."

I stared at him, floored. He'd as good as said it_: I __**warned**__ you. Nyah, nyah, nyah._ "Ash—"

His silent judgment as painful as accusations would have been. "He really is the best trainer left. You'll survive it. _I_ did."

Somehow it hurt more that he'd accepted my arrangement with Al instead of still being angry about it. A week ago I'd have been relieved, but now it felt like a kick in the stomach. _What the hell is wrong with me?_ "He put you through hell and you _didn't _try to kill him? Not even once?"

Ash began counting on his fingers, reached ten, looked thoughtfully at the ceiling, then counted another dozen or so. "Lost count. And that was before the Prohibition was put in place. Since then I've had to be more subtle about fucking with his life."

"That's why you had his stuff, when I got here? And he sued you to get it back?"

Ash grinned, mirthless and satisfied. "It's not the first time." I detected a bare trace of amusement, as if he were already moving past the hurt and pain and putting another hash mark in the "Al" column of the Ash vs. Al scoreboard. "Eternity gives you a long time to plan. Even someone as paranoid as Al gets tired of constantly looking over his shoulder."

Appalled and fascinated both, I wondered whether Ash, the most paranoid demon I'd ever met, ever stopped looking over his own shoulder. "Can he still get into your head?"

"No. We're not linked any longer, at least not at that level. Honestly, Evie, he's done far worse to me. You get over it."

I stared at Ash, absolutely dumbstruck once more. "_Get over it._ That's your response to all this."

Ash's brow furrowed. "You want me to coddle you? Protect you from the big bad demon teacher?"

I had to look away, fury and hurt a churning mess in my stomach and prickling my eyes. Then I sneezed. _Adrian, you have perfectly awful timing._ Standing quickly, I jerked the silver bracelets from Ash's grip, to prevent me from cursing anyone through a mirror. No sense in taking out my rage on Adrian…even if _he'd_ lied to me, too. The thought stopped me mid-motion, and I had to fight Therese for a good three seconds before I could slip the bracelets on. Surely Adrian knew that Rachel was alive. The two friends I thought I could count on had screwed me over, too. God, that thought hadn't had time to sink in yet. Was Rachel _that_ desperate to escape Al?

Ash gave me a questioning look. "Going somewhere?"

I felt my breath leave in a rush that was a half laugh, half huff. "Do you _care_…? Adrian's calling. I need my mirror." I jumped from the room to the lab, the last place I'd seen my calling mirror. I was sick and fucking tired of being the sensible, mature person who _knew better_ than to taunt a demon.

But hell, maybe I wasn't even taunting him. Maybe Al hadn't broken something that wasn't already broken. Maybe this whole incident had brought forth the cruel reality in crystal clarity- Ash had never cared, just been following his possessive demon bullshit programming out for the same reasons Al had tried to bind me after losing Rachel. Because I was a fucking demon woman, and because I was fucking _there_. We'd just lost the luster of our sexual infatuation, that's all. Time to settle down into a convenient, loveless arranged bullshit demon alliance. _Woohoo._

Damned if I'd _ever_ let the bastard taste my blood again, though.

I also _knew_ _better_ than to call Adrian in the mood I was in. But I felt myself aligning my fingers on the appropriate glyphs anyway. Therese was driving, even as Evie cautioned her that she was probably about to lose her only ally in the Coven. Therese didn't give a bloody damn who I pissed off at the moment. I answered the call with little grace and a lot of mental grump. _What?_

_I have the... _ Adrian caught my altered mood the moment he picked up. _More bad news…? _

I put a hand to my temple, feeling, for the first time, like a demon unwillingly summoned might feel- full of contempt for my puny potential summoner and his awful timing, when I had far more important things to worry about. Of course I wouldn't attack Adrian, but I wasn't in the mood to be very nice, either. _Let's see…Made a truce with Al, then he attacked me. Ash and I managed to talk things out and fix nothing. And I found out the only people left whom I had any trust in have lied to me. That about sums up the last hour or two. Pretty eventful. What did you find out?_

_H-how?_ Adrian realized right away that the jig was up as far as his deception. _No, wait. Evie, I didn't want to lie to you—_

_But you did. Pierce did. Rachel did. Hell, Trent and Ceri were fucking lying to my face even as they tried to get me to trust them with this whole elf business._ I stared at the lovely designs on the mirror, seeing his white face in my mind, but feeling absolutely no mercy. _Nice touch, drugging me back there, by the way. Something in the coffee?_

Adrian was mentally wringing his hands now, and feeling him enter damage-control mode just set me off even worse. _No, no, no, please, it wasn't like that—_

_It doesn't matter._ At that moment, nothing mattered. I'd had it with everyone. I wanted my own place, away from everyone and everything, to be left alone to focus on myself and nothing else. I'd fucking train my own damned self. With books. Ash, Al, the rest of the world could kiss my ass.

Well, no, wait…there was still Hope. The most inappropriately named woman in the entire bloody Ever After.

All right, there was ONE person who hadn't screwed me over. Yet. It was probably inevitable, though. Well…I guess there was Newt, too. She'd actually been pretty straight with me, except for the whole memory-stealing bit. Though she'd more than amply paid me back for that, hadn't she? Maybe I should go shack up with her. My mental brakes came on with a screech. _Hold on, there, partner…If, given the choice between Al and Ash, __**Newt**__ is coming out on __**top**__…? Perhaps you should consider whether you're thinking all that clearly…_

Adrian could probably hear most of my thoughts, but I didn't care._ Evie…please. I had to go along with it. I didn't want to. Let me…please let me explain._

His heartsick emotions were worming their way past my defenses, dragging queasiness in its wake- no, wait, _that_ was the feeling of _Ash,_ summoning me back to the library, apparently too fucking lazy to get his ass out of his chair and follow me. I guess he cared after all…? Heh, not likely. I'd wounded his pride, poor dear. Furious, I fought his summons, fought it until the pain had me wheezing and groaning around the hard knot in my gut. _Fucking demons_! I exploded. I felt Adrian wince. _Fine. Fine, fine, fine. Whatever. I'll signal you when His Nibbs sees fit to let me have a moment alone. Don't summon me until then, or he'll just yank me right back. _

I jerked my hand away from the glass before I lost control of my strength and shattered it. All this being yanked back and forth against my will was a total bitch. First thing I'd do once this whole Hope thing was done…?

I'd reset my password, and tell _nobody_ what it was. _Ever_.


	13. Le Lèthè

_The title of this chapter came from a poem by Charles Baudelaire, whose poems I adore even though I don't even like poetry. __It was just perfect, both for the sentiments and the concept of _lethe_, the waters of amnesia. I included it at the end of the chapter.__ Whether these represent Evie's or Ash's thoughts, I'll just let you guess. *g*_ ****  
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**In Which Evie Discovers Yet Another Betrayal From Someone Unexpected**

"Oh, _Hell_ no," I growled, seeing where I was. "You did _not_ just fucking summon me, Al."

The bracelets were back off before I had a moment to think, thrown at his feet like gauntlets, but Al put his gloved hands up in a placating _don't__ shoot_ gesture. "Ash is being unreasonable," he began, but stopped when I glared daggers at him.

"You have Ash to thank for not letting me blow you into bloody little demon tidbits," I said, and even I wanted to shiver at the ice in my voice. Therese was _this_ close to losing it again, and Ash certainly wasn't blocking Al now. "What the hell do you want? To rape my memories again? Just try it."

Al glared back, goat-eyes slitted but still wary. "You know you don't have it in you, to kill me in cold blood."

"You don't think so...? I murdered the last asshole who tried to kill me, why not you?"

"That was self-defense. And I'm not attacking you. Not now, anyway. Do you really think you'll murder someone who isn't fighting back?" He tucked his hands behind his back, suave and congenial as any haughty nobleman faced with an uppity peasant girl.

Therese twisted and clawed in me, but the damned demon had a point. "I could break your neck," I suggested. "It wouldn't kill you. And it'd make me feel better."

Al laughed, and I knew I wouldn't do it. He knew me too well, and I'd never really gotten the knack of threatening people. Break your neck? That was orders of magnitude behind the epic grotesquery of Al's threats, so much so that I was certain he was docking me points for lack of creativity. I was ready to go pound my head against his damned olive tree again. "Go ahead," he said, raising his chin. "I won't fight back. It will be interesting to see how far you get."

"Fuck you, Al." He'd hurt me, hurt me on a level so deep that I was still shaking inside, still reeling from the revelation. "How could you do it? You vicious, horrible little prick."

Al blinked at my word choice, gaze slipping from mine. "I admit that I was less than gentle-" he began.

"You left him there! Without even the ability to tap a fucking line!"

Al opened and closed his mouth several times, baffled. I realized _he'_d been referring to his treatment of my memories, not his treatment of Ash. "Yes...? And...?" he said finally, waiting for the punch line.

Again, my rage tripped over itself clumsily. "And you didn't tell me! You lied to me!"

Al's forehead crinkled with baffled confusion. "Of course I did…this was news to you, just now?"

"I-" Damned demon, he wasn't giving me the cues I needed to really work myself into a righteous lather. All I could manage was a light froth. "Yes! Ash just told me!"

Al's face cleared and he merely looked annoyed. "My dear, I assumed he'd told you all about it already. Really, this is quite anticlimactic. I really thought you'd gone into our truce today with a full appreciation of my ignoble actions."

"Well? No! I didn't!" I tried to get back into the rhythm, but I could already tell it was pointless. It's not like I'd ever squeeze an apology out of him. My eyes narrowed as I considered making him give me one in exchange for whatever news he seemed to think I had about Rachel. But no- that would mean deliberately letting him into my head, and that was never, _ever_ happening again. "Fuck the truce! You can get your own damned shrubbery!"

Al smiled, patronizing little snot that he was, and waved a chiding finger at me. But the undercurrent of what I'd said was bothering him, I could tell from the lines that reappeared on his brow. He shifted, bracing a hand on the low stone wall beside the path. His eyes darted to the olive tree, back to me. "She's really alive...?"

I felt my jaw set as I gritted my teeth. "So you say. Did Pierce tell you anything?"

Al hissed through his teeth. "No."

There was a lot hidden in that hiss that I really didn't want to think about- not the least of which was that Al was really, really creative with the threats and torture. Either he'd used them, or he'd been too furious and had simply killed the witch outright. I'd liked Pierce. But I couldn't bring myself to ask about his fate. Not yet. Not when learning he'd been tortured might make Therese feel _satisfaction_, however slight. "Guess you'll be wanting in my head again, then...?" I tapped my noggin teasingly. "Fat chance."

Al gave me another annoyed look. "Yvette-"

"Fat. Chance."

"Don't you want to know...?"

"I just spoke to a colleague. His guilt pretty much confirmed it. They all lied to us. Pierce, Ceri, Trent. They fucking lied to my face about the death of my dear friend. There. Happy now?"

Al closed his eyes, pain in every line of his features. He suddenly looked...old. "Did you know that you've spoken to her, Yvette?"

"I—what?"

"You've taken an amnesia curse. I don't know when it happened. But I saw a glimpse of her in your mind. I was following it, when..." He trailed off, taking a step to sit on the stone wall. He put a hand to his temple, hunching in on himself as if attackers were closing in with merciless fists and boots. "A demon curse," he elaborated, voice barely audible. "_Ceri's_."

I felt cold, sick. A demon curse would need demon blood to invoke. I guess some part of me had hoped that he'd been wrong- or rather, I wanted Rachel to be alive, but I also wanted her not to be part of this. I wanted her friends to be protecting her, keeping her from us against her will. I supposed that it was still possible, but...would they really _steal_ her blood to quicken a demon curse? It was possible, but...

Pierce's smirk rose to my mind. He'd known. His triumph could have been simply due to fooling Al for so long, but perhaps...perhaps it was the knowledge that Rachel was in on it, that it was Rachel's desire to escape Al that made it possible. And I knew Rachel. If she wanted to be somewhere, with someone, no force in Heaven or Hell would keep her away.

"She...she might not be awake yet. They might still be protecting her...?"

Al was shaking his head. "No, her image in your mind was connected to some rather violent emotions...not the least of which was frustration and betrayal."

My mouth was tight, and now it began to quiver. "She...you think _Rachel_ cursed me?" I blinked back tears. "You really think she'd do that to me if I weren't- _oh_."

Al's cold, red glare fell on me, from under his gloved fingers. "That's what I wanted to know. No, I don't think she'd do that _without __your__ full__ cooperation._"

"Oh." All my anger had drained away, overcome by uncertainty. "Oh." I thought back, trying to imagine Rachel entering the boardroom, but all I could remember was Adrian's hunched shoulders, and the shaking confusion of waking unexpectedly. Shoulder hurting like a bitch. Stuffy, aching head and burning eyes, all the symptoms of a good long cry and perhaps a struggle with a very experienced (not to mention fucking _strong_) security officer. Al was watching me as I pieced things together, weighed my loyalties to him, to Rachel, and came up with a giant question mark. Finally, I caved. "Is this curse permanent?"

"I couldn't tell," Al replied, seeming mollified that I was at least thinking seriously about it. "They don't have to be- they're not the hack-job earth potions the witches have outlawed. The brief impression I received of it, however, suggested it was hastily put together. This is what I believe happened: they intended to hide you from the collective as well, and expected you to take the offer."

"And I said no, and they quickly cobbled together a curse to make me forget so I wouldn't give it away."

"The question is, did you take it willingly?"

I shrugged. "Does it matter?"

Al fixed me with a stare that shook me to my core. "It does. If you conspired to hide her from me…"

"Let me guess. No more teaching unless I let you into my head. Two words: Fat chance."

Al growled and rose, and I skipped back, remembered I was a big, bad demoness, and squared my shoulders. But perhaps I needn't have worried. I bumped against a solid form, a solid form that had arms that steadied me, and I knew that Ash had once again arrived to back me up. A tight little knot in my heart melted when I caught his scent, felt his warmth. Whatever else, he was there when he was needed, and I couldn't take that for granted. "How much did you hear?" I asked him.

"Enough," he replied. To Al, he said, "Are you backing out of the deal, _Gally_?"

Al was absolutely still, but I could still feel his flinch. Even I found Ash's use of Ceri's pet name, right after Al had learned of Ceri's betrayal, to be overly cruel. _Wait,__ I__'__m __sympathizing__ with__** Al**__,__ now?_ _Yvette__ must __be__ back__ in__ charge,_ I thought, and my mental voice held contempt for my own compassion. I could see the mental battle raging behind his eyes, and the bitter jealousy that had surfaced briefly when Ash's fingers pressed my ribs in a possessive caress. His reputation was in shreds- he had to continue training me if he wanted to maintain his position here. He could hardly go back to being a common snatcher of familiars now. But I realized how much my potential betrayal was killing him, too- just as much as his betrayal had killed me.

I'd just had my revenge on Al. Funny. It didn't feel sweet at all. It just made me feel heartsick.

"OK, Al. How do I remove the curse?"

He regarded me with narrowed eyes. He'd made himself so vulnerable to me- it didn't matter how he hid his pain, he knew I knew it was there. I suddenly didn't want myself to have betrayed him, even if I hated him. I wasn't like the heartless bastards who populated the Ever After. It was suddenly important to me to know what I'd done, too. "A simple phrase, chosen by the one who invoked the curse. Does such a phrase come to mind?"

I took a moment to search my head. "No."

"Then you didn't invoke it." Al didn't sound like he believed me, but was humoring me anyway. Ash remained silent as the statue he was emulating, but I felt him nosing around our bond like a bloodhound, perhaps seeking a way into my head to confirm or deny Al's accusation. I leaned into him, even as I pushed him away from my mind. No. No more demons in my head.

"Adrian's going to summon me later with information about the Hope case," I said, then winced inwardly at my own wording. _Hope__ case?__ Detective__ Evie__ is __on__ the __job!_ "He was there. He'll know it. If he won't give it to me…but I think he will. He knew what they did, but he wasn't happy about it. And it's not like it was _his_ fault you found out. They didn't know about Rachel's mark on Hope, I guess. So you'd have found out anyway, as soon as I mentioned it."

Al inclined his head, but that fragile bond of trust we'd shared only an hour before was most likely gone forever. Even if I proved my innocence to him, I doubted very much he'd ever give me that kind of power over him again. And I knew I'd never allow him unfettered access to my mind again, even if he'd had apparently good reasons for what he'd done. I suddenly felt sorry for its loss, though. I had so little trust to spare, and so few occasions to give it. But now I could see why it was so grudgingly given, when it was so quickly and easily betrayed. Nobody in their right mind would trust a demon.

I thought of Ceri, Trent, and Quen. And Rachel. And Adrian. I guess I was included in that category now, too.

"Ash…when's dusk?"

"Half an hour or so."

"Will you go with me when Adrian summons me?"

I felt him tense behind me, heard the frustration in his voice. "Why are you even asking?" he muttered under his breath. _Especially __in__ front__ of__ Al_, he added silently, and I blinked. Al was smiling, the cold, smirking smile of someone witnessing a lover's spat.

_Huh?_

_Never mind. Of course I will._

_I__ will__ never __understand__ demons_. Ash's odd response weighing on my mind, I brought out one of Adrian's signaling disks and snapped it. "He'll summon me shortly. I'll bring you over as soon as the sun's down. I want to talk to him alone first."

Ash made another irritated noise behind me, and Al grinned even wider. I put my head down and ignored them both, counting to ten before I went postal. This had to be some idiot territorial demon male thing, and I wasn't going to play along.

So much to angst over. So little time.

I hadn't even reached five before the summons swept me away.

* * *

><p>LE LÈTHÈ<p>

- Charles Baudelaire, translated by William Aggeler

_Viens sur mon coeur, âme cruelle et sourde,_  
><em> Tigre adoré, monstre aux airs indolents; <em>  
><em> Je veux longtemps plonger mes doigts tremblants<em>  
><em> Dans l'épaisseur de ta crinière lourde;<em>

_ Dans tes jupons remplis de ton parfum_  
><em> Ensevelir ma tête endolorie, <em>  
><em> Et respirer, comme une fleur flétrie,<em>  
><em> Le doux relent de mon amour défunt.<em>

_ Je veux dormir! dormir plutôt que vivre!_  
><em> Dans un sommeil aussi doux que la mort, <em>  
><em> J'étalerai mes baisers sans remords <em>  
><em> Sur ton beau corps poli comme le cuivre.<em>

_ Pour engloutir mes sanglots apaisés_  
><em> Rien ne me vaut l'abîme de ta couche; <em>  
><em> L'oubli puissant habite sur ta bouche, <em>  
><em> Et le Léthé coule dans tes baisers.<em>

_ À mon destin, désormais mon délice,_  
><em> J'obéirai comme un prédestiné; <em>  
><em> Martyr docile, innocent condamné, <em>  
><em> Dont la ferveur attise le supplice,<em>

_ Je sucerai, pour noyer ma rancoeur,_  
><em> Le népenthès et la bonne ciguë <em>  
><em> Aux bouts charmants de cette gorge aiguë<em>  
><em> Qui n'a jamais emprisonné de coeur.<em>

Come, lie upon my breast, cruel, insensitive soul,  
>Adored tigress, monster with the indolent air;<br>I want to plunge trembling fingers for a long time  
>In the thickness of your heavy mane,<p>

To bury my head, full of pain  
>In your skirts redolent of your perfume,<br>To inhale, as from a withered flower,  
>The moldy sweetness of my defunct love.<p>

I wish to sleep! to sleep rather than live!  
>In a slumber doubtful as death,<br>I shall remorselessly cover with my kisses  
>Your lovely body polished like copper.<p>

To bury my subdued sobbing  
>Nothing equals the abyss of your bed,<br>Potent oblivion dwells upon your lips  
>And Lethe flows in your kisses.<p>

My fate, hereafter my delight,  
>I'll obey like one predestined;<br>Docile martyr, innocent man condemned,  
>Whose fervor aggravates the punishment.<p>

I shall suck, to drown my rancor,  
>Nepenthe and the good hemlock<br>From the charming tips of those pointed breasts  
>That have never guarded a heart.<p> 


	14. Confession

_Had to retcon a teensy portion of this chapter: I forgot that Ku'Sox killed off half the Coven in Pale Demon. Durr. In case you wondered who "Mary" was, she was Brooke's replacement. I forgot to mention that bit then. In this universe, Pierce didn't fight for a Coven seat. A small detail, but it's been bugging me. Adrian's much more likely to go rogue after getting such a nasty shock from fighting Ku'Sox._

**In Which Adrian Does Not Get Maimed. Much.**

Appearing in a cloud of stinking burnt amber was really getting old. Especially the expression on the summoner's face- either they back off coughing, or they try to hide their reaction out of politeness and look like a goose laying a giant egg. I should know. I was that summoner for years, and it's just not something you get used to. Unless you lived marinated in it for months. Even the most seasoned summoner can't keep the tears out of their eyes, when that circle falls and the stink hits them—

Adrian's watery-eyed expression was still apologetic, which I suppose I might one day appreciate if I ever got used to this whole summoning thing. But right now I was noticing the one thing that was missing.

"No circle…?" I asked, as he suppressed a cough. At least it wasn't the basement, this time, but the lovely Kalamack Gardens, so the stench would dissipate rapidly. It was the first time I'd ever really thought about it, the reek I now carried with me, and it somehow seemed appropriate, now that my ego had gone down in flames.

Adrian stole a breath through his mouth and looked confused. "Of course not," he said, though he did take a step back. "Do I need one now?"

I folded my arms, wishing I had more capacity for ruthlessness. My ability to maintain a tidal wave of fury was far from demonic and more what you'd expect from your average bunny. "You idiot. If you're going to summon demons, you really need to do it properly. I'll go easy on you this time."

Adrian's mouth opened and closed a few times, as I walked over to a bench and sat, glaring at him. "Uh, Evie…"

"So do you know the phrase I need? I'm willing to bargain for it."

"Evie, stop it," Adrian snapped, finally getting annoyed. "There's no need to guilt-trip me. I assure you that I've been doing a fine job of it myself."

I watched him, knowing he had, and it pissed me off even as it eased a little of the hurt inside. "You didn't use a circle on me. That went a long way toward getting me to listen to what you have to say. But I'll be honest, the only reason I'm here is Hope. And that phrase, to break the curse."

"Why would I use a circle?" he asked, irritated confusion crinkling his eyes.

I looked at my interlaced fingers, feeling heavy and tired. "Because I'm a demon. I can't be trusted."

"No, no, no—is that really what you think?" Adrian sat beside me, grimacing with his chagrin. "It's not like that, I promise. I really thought…I mean, we, we really thought, Rachel thought it too, that you wanted out. Really. And then you didn't. And, well, we really didn't know what to do."

"So you cursed me."

"I didn't…well, I didn't want to, I didn't agree, but they were ready to curse me, too. A Coven member! I couldn't believe they thought they'd get away with it. But Trent…Ceri…Evie, they're…_scary_."

I stared at Adrian, disgust warring with exasperation. "You mean to tell me you agreed because you were frightened of_ elves_?"

Adrian flushed. Great, I'd managed to humiliate him. Maybe I could stomp on his balls for an encore, just to finish the job. "I'm an earth witch. Third best in the world. But I can't face down two elves versed in serious black magic, a demon, and an elf who can steal someone's soul with wild magic, OK? And you finally agreed to it—"

"I agreed?" It felt like a rock dropped into my stomach, splashing acid across my innards and sending the burn up to my face, my pounding head. "I_ agreed?"_

"At first. You were really pissed about it, but Rachel talked you into it. She left with Trent and the pixy for his road trip, and we talked while Ceri was stirring it, and…and you changed your mind."

I stared at him, brows knitted in confusion. "I agreed?" I asked again, miserable. _Well, of course, I did. Wasn't this just the perfect ending to this little drama?_ "Hell. And I thought this day couldn't get any worse."

"Uh." Articulate, as usual. I found it endearing, actually, and found my mouth twitching even as I felt my future falling apart. Mysterious, ancient Dali as my tutor? My stomach rebelled at the thought. "Why does it matter?"

"Because it means that Al will probably try to murder me again the minute I get back. He's not exactly his most rational where Rachel's concerned. I think…I think he probably killed Pierce when he found out."

"Yeah- how did he find out?" Adrian didn't sound accusatory, just curious.

I filled him in on how Rachel's mark hadn't transferred to Al as it should have, if she were dead and not simply cut off. A fine distinction, but the demon database wasn't sentient, and hadn't raised any flags that anything was unusual with Rachel's sudden drop-out. Ash's myriad marks of debt hadn't transferred to me either, I suddenly realized, for the same reason. Had I been aware of this, I could have saved us both quite a lot of angst. _ Story of my life…_

"So it didn't even matter, in the end," Adrian said wryly. "He'd have found out when you asked about the mark, whether you knew or not."

"Yeah. Can you please tell me the phrase to break the curse?"

"I totally would, but…I don't know it. Ceri didn't tell me."

"Ceri cursed me."

"Yeah. She's…" he trailed off, but I could see it on his lips again_. Scary._

I burst out laughing at the mental image of little blond Ceri menacing Adrian. Adrian was about three heads taller than the diminutive elf and surely weighed twice as much. "Well, she did survive Al for a thousand years, and frankly he's the scariest sane bastard I know." (Which was true. I didn't really _know_ Dali. And Newt and Ku'Sox weren't_ sane_.) "Didn't tell you, or wouldn't?"

Adrian grimaced. "Wouldn't. I think she knew I'd tell you if I could."

I felt a tiny little piece of the ice around my heart melt, because I believed him. I _wanted_ to believe him. Adrian was still on my side, even if he'd stood by and watched them screw my memory. He was right, there wasn't much he could have done against three determined elves. "But they didn't curse you?"

Adrian sat a little straighter. "No, I'm protected, first of all—you think people don't try to hit us with memory charms on a daily basis? It's kind of part of the plumber job description. They could have busted through it, but the Coven would have known, and they really,_ really_ want the Coven and the witches on their side. I know you feel betrayed. They shouldn't have forced you to take the curse. I'm sure if Rachel had still been there, she'd have told them not to do it. I think she'll be furious when she finds out."

I closed my eyes as another wave of intense, painful relief swept through me. Rachel, for all that she was hiding out from Al, had tried to offer me a kind of freedom. She hadn't cursed me against my will. Ceri and Quen had. Out of loyalty to Rachel. I supposed I shouldn't blame them, but…

"It was to protect you, too," Adrian said, touching my shoulder with hesitant lightness. I didn't pull away. "Ceri knew that Al would be murderously angry if he knew you were keeping this secret from him. She really thought she was protecting you by not giving you a choice about it."

"It didn't protect me," I said. "Al nearly ripped my head off trying to get at the suppressed memory."

Adrian winced. "He wasn't ever supposed to find out. Not until Rachel was ready to come back. And then you'd have been none the wiser, and it wouldn't have mattered."

I gazed at him through a misty veil of unshed tears. I wanted so badly to believe him, to believe that I still had allies over here. I sighed, finding myself leaning just a little in his direction. "I'm just not sure what to think, or what to believe, anymore. Pretty much everyone's screwed me over today. I can't even blame anyone, not even Al. It'd be so much easier if I could."

"Evie…" Adrian's voice was quietly intense. "You know you can trust me, right?"

I hesitated for a moment, staring at the neat gravel of the garden path. The setting sunlight was giving everything a beautiful orange tint, even if the sun were hidden behind the stately trees. "I want to," I said. "Unless you're speaking on behalf of the Coven, in which case—"

"No," he said, then drew a deep breath. "Screw the Coven."

I started and stared at him in shock. He looked a little worried too, expecting the lightning bolt to smite him at any instant. "Adrian—"

"No. Besides, what Coven? Wyatt, Mary, and Amanda are dead—"

"What?" I gasped. That was news to me.

"KuSox. Ate them."

"Oh my God." I gaped at him. "So the Coven is you, Vivian, and Oliver?"

" Yeah. Me, Viv, and Oliver. Oh—and three of Oliver's flunkies who'll be sworn in next summer. None of them are older than twenty five and they all worship the ground he walks on. Viv's sort of on the fence about demon magic after the Ku'Sox thing, but Oliver? Evie, the elves _have the cure_ for our most devastating childhood illness, and Oliver's negotiating with them to_ suppress _it. Out of fear, but not the right kind of fear. He's terrified of you and Rachel just because you're stronger. That's it. If we regain our heritage, he's not going to be running things anymore. He's jealous. It's so…_stupid_!"

I felt like I'd been clocked over the head with a brick. "Of course he is. But Adrian…what you're saying, it's…"

"Treason, and Oliver would freak if he heard. I know." Adrian's eyes were fierce and hard. "Evie, we couldn't do shit against Ku'Sox. You and Rachel, you're going to be the ones to save us, not the Coven. Oliver's right, the Coven _will_ be obsolete, especially if they keep listening to him. We need you on our side."

"I've always been on the side of the witches." I watched him as he paced, bursting with nervous energy, and some of his energy started leaking into me. "You know I won't do anything that would lead to genocide. I believe Ceri and Trent as far as the elf thing goes- that they'll start a war if their first child is demon-napped. The demons may have abandoned their own children, but I won't."

"I know." Adrian startled me again by standing before me and pulling me to my feet. Reluctantly, I let him, staring at the gleam in his eyes with a growing wonder. Adrian, a rebel? Adrian, a man of passion? A man of action? "It's why I can't stand seeing you sitting there wallowing in self-loathing and depression. You're n-not alone, Evie. I'll help you. I'll s-stand with you." He was blushing again, a deep flush that trailed down his neck and over his ears, and I'm certain I had a very stupid look on my face indeed when he bent and brushed his lips over mine. It was so light, so hesitant, like the wings of a butterfly, and he pulled back immediately, brave blue eyes meeting mine in a gaze that was even more eloquent than the fleeting kiss.

It was like the world literally rocked and turned another ninety degrees, settling back down again with a lurch that might have made me stumble, if his hands hadn't been resting lightly but firmly on my shoulders. It was like I was seeing him for the first time. He was tall, slender, with short-cropped reddish-blond hair. He was so ordinary-looking, I'd always thought so, but now I was noticing the shape of his wide mouth, straight teeth, and seeing just how expressive his lips were. They were trembling a little now, parted with unbearable tension. His eyes- how had I never noticed what lovely, large, beautiful blue eyes he had? They were framed with short lashes, under heavy reddish eyebrows, brows which were a little uneven in an endearing sort of way. One of them had a little scar beside it, one I'd never noticed before because I'd never looked at him, really _looked. _His lashes were trembling. So were his hands. He was a bundle of nerves, but his light blue eyes were steady, holding my gaze with an earnest honesty that shot through the shields around my heart like an arrow.

I don't know how long I stared at him, heart pounding painfully fast, before he took my silence as assent and bent to kiss me again. I didn't even have the presence of mind to close my eyes, and they met his as his lips met mine again, bolder, firmer, slightly parted and very, very warm. Real. Kind. Honest. _Real._ There was no flood of passion, no skillful application of ley line magic to make me swoon. There was just a man, an ordinary, wonderful man, holding me, kissing me, offering me something normal and absolutely extraordinary at the same time.

It probably did nothing for his ego that I didn't return his kiss for more than a few seconds before a sob shook my frame, but I couldn't help it. Another one sob jerked my lips away from his, and I looked down, embarrassed and horrified and elated all at once. His arms slipped around me, tentative at first, then stronger, and he held me as I shook from an emotion so strong that I couldn't even identify it. He'd broken right through something, something far older and stronger than the events of the past week.

It was some time before I heard the words he was shushing me with, before they started to make sense. "It's all right, shh, I know. Shitty timing, and you've got someone, sort of, and anyway I'm just a witch, and I'm not asking anything of you, honest. I just, I needed to tell you, to show you. It's OK, nothing's wrong, nothing's going to change, I don't expect anything from you."

His words hit me like a punch in the gut- he had no idea what he'd done, what a precious gift this was to me. At that moment I wished more than ever before that I were someone else, anyone else, and able to give him back even a fraction of what he'd just given me. It wasn't that I suddenly realized I'd loved him all along- no, even as I clung to him, the tingle of his kiss still on my lips, I knew that it was impossible. Not only because of who I was, but because of who he was. Coven members disavowed all ties, were forbidden to marry or even keep their surnames. And the Coven was for life, more than a job—it came with magical ties, ancient rites that couldn't be easily broken.

It was that I _could_ have loved him, had things been different. Had I not already been claimed by a demon who would rip him to shreds when he found out. Had I not been a danger to him, with my unleashed inner Therese, who would want to share herself with him in a way he couldn't possibly survive, much less appreciate.

It was just his simply honesty, a clean avowal of a clean feeling, untainted by machinations and politics and what status I would bring, what I could do, what I could give him. Someone found me worthy of love and affection. Someone saw beyond the demon, beyond the scar, beyond the sarcasm and the isolation. Someone saw me as a real person. As a woman. Maybe even a desirable one.

The face I turned up to him made him stop his stuttering nonsense and just stare back, chagrin and concern and a little rueful hope etched all over his features. _Really?_ I wanted to ask. _You really mean it? You're not just doing this so I'll forgive you and be your ally? _I didn't ask. I still couldn't speak, not with the boulder still lodged in my throat. He gave me a watery, hesitant smile, and pressed his lips to my forehead. "It's all right," he said again, lips soft against my skin. We held that pose for awhile, embracing in a manner that, while it wasn't quite chaste, held no grand romantic passion. It was there only as a potential, a possible future of many.

My hiccupping eventually slowed to a halt, and I knew that the sun had set from the nudges I was starting to get in my head. I cleared my throat and stepped away, and his arms fell away with only a hint of reluctance. "Thank you," I said, voice still hoarse. I was grateful for the coming darkness, lit by ornate wrought-iron lanterns mimicking old fashioned gaslights, dotted here and there throughout the garden. "I can't tell you…how much that means to me."

He cleared his throat as well, his discomfort stemming from his usual social awkwardness rising to the forefront once more. "You know, I considered _letting_ them curse me so I'd forget I got you into the mess, earlier. But then we did all that talking, and…"

I raised a brow. "What did we talk about?"

He shrugged. "You. Ash. Al. Everything that's gone on for the past couple of years."

I could see it in my head, the mental state I'd have been in after being confronted with Rachel's miraculous resurrection and subsequent decision to stay with demons and let them curse me. I could see myself unloading everything onto Adrian's shoulders. "Sorry," I said, stupidly. I wasn't sorry. Not _really._

"Anyway, I couldn't…I didn't want….I wouldn't let myself forget what you told me. So I had to watch them curse you. Worst thing I've ever done, I think. _ I'm_ sorry. If I were more clever, maybe I could've done things differently."

"It's all right." I wiped my face with my shirt, a long shirt I'd stolen from Ash that didn't fit. It occurred to me that I hadn't worn normal clothing in months, not since Ash had first kidnapped me for my aborted journey Down Under. Thinking about clothing, at a time like this, was mundane enough that a short laugh escaped me. "Adrian, if things were different—"

"Yeah. This is the part where I'd be working up the courage to ask you on a date."

Another little laugh escaped me, small, but with a hint of real pleasure. "You'd be the first, actually." I found myself grinning, a silly grin. "I'm old enough to be your mother," I reminded him, "But I'd say yes."

"Bah," he said, his own grin wider than I'd ever seen it before. "I like mature women."

I took a deep breath, catching all kinds of lovely night-blooming flower scents and greenery in the cooling evening air. Everything suddenly seemed luminous, magical, glowing with secret inner fire. I took another, purging from my heart a load of sickness and grief and horror I'd carried with me for days, for months, for years and years. For the first time, I found a hint of optimism about my current mission. Maybe it would all work out. Maybe Rachel and Trent would be successful in their mission, perhaps I'd rescue Hope from her fate. Maybe I'd figure out how to mend things with Ash, and with Al. Ash was alive. Rachel was alive.

_I _was alive. More alive than I'd felt since the day Al told me that Ash's soul had been torn to shreds.

"Along those l-lines…" he said, his usual hesitation making his voice catch, "and don't k-kill me for saying this, but…you don't have to put up with Ash's shit. You know that, right?"

_Bless you, you dear, dear man._ I kept my voice gentle. "Thanks…really, thanks for the sentiment, but I don't put up with his shit out of love, or because I secretly think I deserve the abuse."

"Then why _do_ you put up with it…?"

It_ was_ an excellent question. And I wasn't entirely sure I hadn't just told a bald-faced lie, a second ago. But I had no more time to analyze it—a more insistent stimulus was nudging my mind, rapidly working its way up into a sneeze.

_Shit. Sunset already? _

I felt icy tendrils of panic working their way through me. I was covered in Adrian's scent. Ash would kill him in a blink. "I should go," I said. "Or you should. Adrian, you can't ever let Ash know how you feel, or what you did. He'll kill you."

"I know."

I thought of the curse I'd taken, albeit unwillingly, to protect Rachel. "Both Ash and Al have access to my mind, and…I'm too selfish to ask you to help me forget."

Adrian's face was grim, but it softened at my words. "I don't want you to forget. And I don't want you to have to keep this a secret, either."

I thought of how it would humiliate Ash if he ever found out I'd lied to him, about something like this. No. I couldn't do it. If I ever expected him to be honest with me, to trust me, I'd have to be straight with him. "No, you're right. Just give me the information you brought. I'll take it back with me."

Adrian set his jaw, but ruined the pose by bouncing one leg. How had I never noticed that habit of his? "Evie…I meant what I said. Abut standing by you. And I think we'll probably need his help. Like getting us back to California, tonight. Can you convince him it's in his best interest to help us?"

I stared at the man I'd just begun to really see, startled all over again. "You'd…you'd be willing to work with him?" A Coven member, now willing to work alongside demons. The world had officially turned upside down.

He flinched, unable to hide his fear, and repeated sternly, "I meant what I said. Besides, if it all goes well, maybe there's a chanced that the demons of the Ever After can finally come home."

I swallowed. There was a lovely mix of anxiety and optimism in my gut now, but maybe…just maybe…with demons, elves, and witches working together…we had a chance at pulling all of this off. "I'll call him."


	15. A Familiar Bargain

__Sorry for the delay! Busy semester and all that, plus I got stuck again. Thanks, Deux3xMachina, for helping me out!__

**In Which Ash Pulls It Off. **_**Again. **_

My old friend anxiety grabbed my gut and twisted. No problem. Bring my demon over to the garden of his ancient enemies, with whom I'd been conspiring, tell him I'd been locking lips with a Coven witch, ask him for a trip to California, and request that he please not disembowel said Coven witch all over the tulips. What could possibly be easier? Fuck. Ash was going to rip us both apart.

Adrian took a few minutes to speak with Ceri on his cell phone, letting her know that Al had discovered the truth thanks to me and my ill-timed innocent request. I'd failed to convince Adrian to leave until after I'd summoned Ash and soothed his colossal ego, mostly because he was right- we needed Ash's help tonight, in getting us to California if nothing else.

Guilt began to add a second voice to the choir churning in my belly. Now that the initial startlement of Adrian's move had faded, I found myself exasperated with him, even as my heart still sang with the unexpected compliment. I didn't even want to know what it said about me, that it took another man's advances to get me to see how blind I'd been to the moat and tower in which I'd imprisoned my heart, but there was no going back to it now. Someone liked me. _ Liked me_. There was no buffer of prior teenaged romance experience to compare it to, no lifetime of dating and giddiness and heartbreak to spoil it. It was exhilarating and terrifying and damned inconvenient right at the moment, thank you very much. Say what you liked about the unconventional relationship I had with my demon, I was pretty certain that he'd look on the intrusion of another male as a challenge to be met with bloody fighting, dirty magic, or whatever else crazy-ass possessive evolved dinosaurs did to rivals.

But I couldn't help how Adrian had made me feel. Just for a moment, I'd felt almost…normal. Special, in a completely mundane kind of way. The kind of _ordinary_ special that Ash would never be able to make me feel, because there was absolutely nothing about my relationship with him that was within even three standard deviations of the normal I was used to. Which was part of my problem, wasn't it? Especially now, when I had no idea how to fix things. However one worked out one's differences with one's potential infernal partner, I had a feeling locking lips with a witch probably wasn't conducive to demonic domestic bliss.

Adrian was still on the phone with Ceri, and the exchange was getting heated. Finally, he gave up, shutting the phone with a petulant snap. Apparently the elf was not going to give up the secret phrase to unlock my memory anytime soon- from Adrian's end of the conversation, I deduced that she'd decided to make its release a condition of the successful completion of my mission and Rachel's. I could understand her point of view- because she knew I'd tell Al, and then Al would probably go interfere with Rachel and Trent's babynapping quest by ripping the father-to-be into tiny little cinnamon-scented pieces. Apparently they'd given me some crucial details of their secret mission before I'd taken the potion, making me even more of a liability. Just great.

"You should get inside a circle," I suggested again. "He's going to be pissed off."

Adrian folded his arms, squaring his jaw. "No. Look, I invoked a few hardcore defensive earth charms earlier, just in case—"

I scowled at him. "In case I attacked you? Gee, thanks."

He scowled back, affronted. "In case you brought _him_ with you, Evie. Sheesh. Doesn't hurt to be prepared, and two of them took a bit of time to cast properly. Wasn't sure I'd have time after we talked."

I gritted my teeth, biting back an urge to snap at him again. "Sorry. You should still get into a circle."

"No," he insisted. "If things are going to change, we'll have to start somewhere. If we're just going to follow tradition and yank him over here, trap him in a circle, and start bargaining like he's a servant, we might as well not bother."

I closed my mouth again, thinking this time before I replied. No, it was still idiocy. "Not this time, Adrian. He might not be rational, and I don't know if I can stop him from killing you long enough to listen. And protections or not, he can still drag you off to the Ever After to sell you."

"You'd be OK with that?" Adrian asked, mouth quirking.

"Of course not! But it's not like I can stop him! I think you're overestimating the influence I have over his actions. My disapproval didn't stop him from capturing and tormenting Nick for a week. I was furious, but there was nothing I could do!"

Adrian looked a bit less sure of himself. "But still. You told me you own him."

"I did…?" I felt my cheeks flush, thinking of what it all must have sounded like. Sheesh. What had I been thinking? "What else did I tell you…?"

Adrian, to his credit, didn't break my gaze. "All of it, I think. The venom thing, the hospital, Therese, Hope…Rachel and Al—"

"I told you about_ that_?" I gasped. _Oh, shit. That wasn't my secret to tell_.

"About Rachel helping you against Al and making a deal with Newt about Hope? Yeah…I suspect there's a lot more there, given that Ivy says Rachel's been acting strange ever since you guys discovered Hope. And especially given the relieved look on your face right now," he added with a grin.

_Damn._ "I used to have an excellent poker face," I insisted sullenly. My earlier elation was all but smothered by irritation and anxiety. Why had Adrian picked _now_, of all times, to get all idealistic- not to mention romantic? It was all spiraling into something way too complicated, especially given how confused I was about where I stood with Ash. What did I want, anyway? "Get into a damned circle, Adrian. I like you. That fact alone is enough to get you killed or kidnapped."

"No. Go ahead and call him, Evie. I can handle myself."

"Willing to bet your life on a couple of earth charms?" I demanded, exasperated beyond measure now.

"Yes. Since I made them. I'm no slouch, _if_ you recall."

_Idiot man!_ "I'm not calling him until—" I sneezed, hard. Brilliant. The sun had set, and Ash could tell.

Adrian gave me a lopsided grin. "I do know his name, you know. His summoning name? It's on record back at HQ, hidden away in the archives only the six of us can access, along with Al's name and a dozen others."

I gave him a look that was both shocked and threatening. _The Coven had demon summoning names on record? Why? _"Seriously? But no. Don't you dare!" I sneezed again, more insistently, feeling anxiety explode in my gut as a cold sweat began to dot my skin. "Just…do me a favor and don't do anything stupid, if he goes nuts and attacks me. He won't kill me."

"Sure. I'll just stand by and do nothing while he abuses you, since you say so. The thought makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and manly inside." Adrian scowled and huffed. "And again, I ask myself…Self, why does Evie put up with that shit?"

I closed my lips, trapping the retort. It was still a valid question, one I didn't like to look at too closely yet. "My choice," I said instead. "And it's not set in stone, yet."

It could be. That was the quick fix to all this, wasn't it? Ash wanted the blood bond again. I could just let him do it. At least, I _assumed_ he did, given that he hadn't blasted me to bits an hour ago. Was that what I really wanted? My fingers slipped to the mark on my chest, rubbing it absently. No…no way was I ready for that kind of commitment, even to save Adrian's life. No way would I be making that kind of commitment under duress, either. But how could I show Ash I was serious about making us work out, too?

I did still want to, didn't I?

Well…I did. But only if_ he_ did.

Who was I fooling? Of course he did- that wasn't the problem. But he would do it even if he loathed the sight of me, because that's apparently what demons did when they decided to pair up. But I wanted so much more than a loveless alliance. I wanted what we had been working on building together, before Al had stuck his big, booted foot in our business and kicked our house of cards all to hell. I think.

I decided to try one last tactic, and dusted off my little-used feminine charm. "Adrian, please. I don't want to see you get hurt. Get in a fucking circle. For my sake. If you're wrong and he kills you, I'll never forgive myself." _Or you. Or him._ "Please?"

Adrian might have caved, then, but apparently my stunted feminine wiles were still pretty easily resisted. Or maybe I was just too obvious. "Evie. Trust me."

I wanted to. I wanted to trust him so badly my teeth ached. Not just that he could protect himself from Ash, but that he was honestly sincere about the nonsense he was spouting. There were so many other ulterior motives that could be driving him- greed, lust for power, even a more innocent desire to make a name for himself, being the most junior member of the Coven. I wasn't so naive as to believe that this was about his feelings for me- which could also easily have been fake. Well, not fake so much as based on an idealized image of me as a decent person caught up in events beyond her control, and not as a slightly batty woman who could go postal if she ever let Therese off her leash.

_Evie. Trust me. _

_Damn it! _I was such a fucking lousy judge of character. It never mattered before, back when I solved the issue by just not trusting _anyone_. Still…

Whatever his motives, or Ceri's, or anyone else's, it was in nobody's best interest to let the war start up again, and perhaps I should just trust that all involved with this whole fiasco were at least sane enough to realize that. Fix the elf problem. Worry about all the fallout and hidden motive shit later.

"Fine." I surrendered, both to his demand and to the itchy sensation that was Ash's increasingly irritated poke for attention. _OK, Ash…consider yourself summoned, _I called silently.

He coalesced before us, in a cloud of burnt amber. To Adrian's credit, he managed not to cough. By now I was so used to the stink of demon magic that it barely even registered. His goat-slitted eyes were narrowed with suspicion already, and I knew he was dying to ask what I'd had to discuss with Adrian that was so important that I hadn't waited for sundown so he could accompany me. I felt my heart sink at the obdurate tightness of his jaw and the flinty coldness of his glare. This was not a man who wanted to hear guilty confessions or offers of alliance. This was a man who'd disembowel Adrian without a second thought, for the sheer satisfaction of causing someone pain just because he'd had a lousy week. It made me wonder what Al had been telling him while I was gone, about elves and witches and treacherous demonesses like me.

I found myself completely uncertain how to approach him, and hesitated. It was enough time for Ash to focus on Adrian, appraise him, and raise an eyebrow. "Not hiding in a circle? Are you arrogant or just stupid?"

Adrian's lips worked for a moment before he squared his shoulders and spoke. "Nice to see you again, Ashmedai."

Ash's stony expression didn't flicker. His eyes flicked back to me, taking in every detail of my face- which surely revealed that I'd been crying, if my aching eyes and headache were any indication of my appearance. "You have information about the demon girl."

_Heh. With all the accusations and confession, I'd kind of forgotten that part…_ "We were waiting until you showed up- we want to ask you for your help."

Ash smiled, and it wasn't nice. "Really. And what is a good little Coven mouse doing, bargaining with demons?"

Adrian didn't flinch at the insult. "I have been given authorization to pursue this matter, as it will affect all of witchkind if the elf-demon war is kindled to life again." A faint rattling sound came from his pocket, where his anxious hand was jiggling uninvoked wooden charms. I knew it was a nervous habit, but Ash might see it as a threat, given that many earth charms could be the equivalent of loaded guns. "But it's more than that. I don't want to bargain, I want to form an alliance. Based on trust and mutual benefit."

I expected Ash to laugh, or scoff, but he just stood there, eying Adrian with a haughty stare. "No deals. Give Yvette the information so we can leave."

"Ash, please," I said, approaching him. "We haven't had a chance to really talk about what's been going on outside of, um, us. Things are looking really bad for demons, here, as well as witches. We need your help—"

I broke off as Ash's hand flashed out and hooked me by the neck, fingers digging into my scalp. He was still ice-cold, in total control. "I dislike your use of "we," Yvette," he said quietly. "What have you been conspiring?" My eyes widened as he probed at my head. Ash wanted another look into my mind, and I scowled. Therese reacted even more decisively, slamming up additional shields. Not without asking, and not without reason!

"Ash, we don't have time for this!" But Ash had dragged me closer, and the coldness of his gaze was turning to molten rage. _Oooh, shit._ He'd smelled Adrian.

_I see,_ he whispered into my mind. _I should have suspected this._

_You don't know shit,_ I shot back, unexpected heat rising in my face. _So not only did I abandon you on the surface for no reason, now I'm conspiring with Al and shagging witches on the side?_

Ash's red eyes bored into me, fury warring with indecision. His hold on my hair was possessive and painful, but I wouldn't flinch. I kept my eyes fixed on his, because to lose this little dominance game would be fatal for Adrian and probably me, too. I was guilty about the kiss, but I hadn't betrayed him, and he'd either see that or I'd have to smack him down.

_I smell his arousal, love. I'll tear him limb from limb._

_Ash—_

_Do you want him?_

_What? No! Why would you even think- _

Ash pulled me close and bent his head to mine, as if to kiss me, but stopped a millimeter from my lips and inhaled instead._ He kissed you against your will, then? Tell me, love, why does he still live? _

Huh? I had to admit, Ash had me stumped there. I guess a _real _demon woman would have fried a witch for daring to touch her. I'd doomed Adrian, hadn't I? I couldn't keep the sudden confusion from my eyes, and dropped them, and suddenly realized with a sinking heart that I'd lost this round. Badly.

But Ash surprised me by releasing me, turning away. I saw all trace of emotion leave his face, until there was nothing there but austere indifference. Even his body relaxed, and the tension leaving him seemed to flood my own bones until they creaked. Something was very, very wrong. "What would you ask of me?" he said to Adrian, formally.

Adrian hadn't missed the byplay between us, and he tried without success to pretend he hadn't seen. "Evie and I need to get to California. To investigate Hope's parents, if we can find them. It's urgent that we get the exact wording of the deal with Zaebos before Ellasbeth has her child. There's more than just Evie's life at stake- if the elves lose their first healthy child to the demons, they'll start the war again. They'll destroy the witches. And they'll destroy you all, too, one way or another."

"What do you offer in exchange?" Ash asked tonelessly, as I stared at him in sick dread. He had his emotionless mask on, and it hurt me to see it. I had a sinking feeling that he was retreating, deep into himself where I wouldn't be able to reach him. Did he have so little faith in me, in my loyalty to him? _Ash_, I prompted, but he'd shut me out.

Adrian, on the other hand, looked like he couldn't believe his luck. He still spoke cautiously, but he seemed to think he had a chance to get through to the demon. He didn't know Ash like I did. "The Ever After is dying. As it stands, the Coven…well…all right, not the Coven, just me, but I might be able to convince them with some really good evidence of cooperation—"

Ash cocked his head, mild concern the only emotion he showed. "Dying? Your evidence of this?"

"Newt," I said. "And Al knows, too. Rachel made a ley line to reality. It's siphoning off the magic that keeps the Ever After alive."

Ash mulled this for a moment, though his eyes never left Adrian. "The Coven is prepared to work on our behalf? Forgive my skepticism. Give the information to Yvette and we will be on our way. I will aid her in resolving this matter myself. You have nothing to offer us."

"I want to help." Adrian quickly amended this with, "It's better if the Coven's involved. The elves might just try to bury the whole thing, otherwise, but if I'm there, they'll have a harder time covering it up."

Ash regarded Adrian with the stare one normally reserves for particularly irritating five-year-olds. "If nothing else, I can walk under the sun," Adrian insisted, not wilting under that glare. "Who's going to help her when the sun comes up?"

Even Ash had to concede that Adrian had a point. "She won't need it. She'll be coming back with me."

"SHE will do what she damned well pleases," I snapped. "And anyway, there's not enough time for me to give up_ all_ the daylight hours, Ash. Ellasbeth's ready to pop any day now."

Ash frowned, and tapped his foot twice. "No, there will be no pretty little agreements based on empty promises and lies. I need something more substantial. A bargain. And a mark."

"No," I said, scowling at him.

"F-fine," Adrian said, after a short hesitation.

"What? Adrian, you're a _Coven council member_- you can't go around wearing a _demon mark!_" I was shocked at the very idea- hadn't they bricked Pierce into the ground, alive, simply for consorting with demons? Surely the Coven would be much more harsh on one of their own who'd partially indebted himself to a demon, and willingly! "Oliver will freak! Not after what happened to Brooke!"

Adrian's cheek twitched a little. "I meant what I said, Evie. If this is what it takes, I'll do it. Oliver's an ass, but maybe this will make him see the severity of the situation. And Viv—I think she'll be on my side, especially after the whole Ku'Sox thing." He gave Ash a look of earnest irritation. "So _fine_. I was hoping not to do the bargaining thing, but we have to start somewhere. A mark in exchange for a trip for us to California, and your help in finding the answer to our problem, and you at least consider the possibility that this is an opportunity to help yourself, too and maybe start taking this whole thing seriously. If the Ever After dies, where else can you go?"

Ash's eyes were still cold, but now they flashed with cunning. "A Coven witch, bargaining with a demon, outside a circle. Such arrogance should really be rewarded. And how do you propose to pay back this debt?"

"Guys! No! Just, stop!" They both ignored me completely. _Damn it! Perhaps I should pretend to faint._

Adrian thought for a moment. "I hadn't given it much thought. I'm not giving out sensitive information, or years of service…" He continued to ignore me, even when I huffed with exasperation. "I kind of hoped you'd take my service to Evie as payment here. I mean, if I help, I'm kind of saving her life. Maybe yours, too. The _Cŵn Annwn _are nothing to sneeze at, after all."

Ash snorted. "Yvette is in no danger of dying by anyone's hand by mine. And my life is in no danger whatsoever. Yet, I enjoy the idea of a Coven witch wandering around with a demon mark, so I agree. Two trips to California-"

Years of dealing with demons came back to me. "And no killing or enslaving anyone in the process," I added without thinking, earning a death-glare from Ash. "What?"

Adrian also gave me an annoyed look. "Evie, will you let me dig my _own _grave, here?"

I threw up my hands in an "I surrender" gesture. "Fine. Fine! You two have at it."

Ash smiled again, small but cruel. "Two trips to California, no killing or enslaving anyone, in exchange for a mark of debt to be removed only if your actions directly prevent the death of myself or Yvette Therese Sinclaire."

"_Directly_ prevent? Wait. That's_ not _what I said," Adrian insisted, scowling. "That's a bit open to interpretation, isn't it?"

Ash's smile turned beatific. "Take it or leave it. I have little patience for summoners today."

Something in Ash's words made my neck prickle, or perhaps it was the gleam in his goat-slitted eyes. _Never trust a smiling demon!_ "Don't agree, Adrian. He's—"

Ash bared his teeth at me. OK,_ that_ wasn't a smile, exactly, not anymore… "And if she is injured under the sun while under your protection, I will call in that mark of debt. I will own your soul. And you will wish you'd never been born, little witch."

I made another exasperated noise. "I am _not_ made of china! And the elves will not be trying to kill me, damn it! Not when I'm trying to help their kid!"

Adrian considered. "Injured could mean anything from a broken leg to hurt feelings, Ashmedai. I'll only accept your claim if it's a physical injury I could have prevented."

"So I stub my toe and you get nabbed? I don't think so!" I stepped between them. "Stop this. Or let me bargain for you."

"And the mark comes off when we find the answer!" Adrian continued in a louder voice, red faced as he glared around me at Ash. "Or if I directly…what you said. Whichever comes first."

"But elves are versed in psychic attacks, witch," Ash said, clearly enjoying himself. "Tell you what. I'll let Yvette be the judge of what constitutes an injury you could have prevented. And whether or not you've saved anyone's life with your actions."

Adrian and I looked at each other for a moment, bewildered triumph on his face and probably dumbfounded horror on mine. But I saw him reach his decision, despite the WAY too good to be true condition. "Done," Adrian said, ignoring the frantic shaking of my head.

A moment later, I felt myself dissolve into the ley line, Adrian's mental presence beside me. I threw my protective bubble around us both, getting an up-close-and-personal peek into Adrian's emotional turmoil. The witch was definitely wondering what he'd gotten himself into- as was I.

A moment later we materialized in a very unexpected, but familiar setting. Ash's spelling kitchen.

I smacked my forehead with my palm, realizing that Ash had just tricked Adrian with exactly the same trick he'd used on me. Same smile too. Just _brilliant._ "I'm going to kill you _both_," I growled.

"California…?" Adrian said, in a small voice that trailed off when he took in the surroundings, the burnt amber reek that pervaded them, and the expression on Ash's face.

"West Coast. Sunset's two hours away," Ash said helpfully. For all the teeth he was showing, his expression was definitely no longer a smile. "Now…how should we pass the time?"


	16. Feeling Incomplete

_The title of this chapter was inspired by "Never Enough" by Epica (lyrics at the end of the chapter, if you're curious). Another chapter in this farce of misunderstandings. They'd better get a clue soon, because I'm about to smack them both upside the head…Many thanks to my beta, Deus3xMachina, for helping me pinpoint what was wrong with the other drafts!  
><em>

_Just FYI, I had a total stupidhead moment when I posted chapter 14, and *forgot* that I was keeping the bit in _Pale Demon_ about Ku'Sox killing off half of the Coven. So that wee bit of the conversation got retconned. There's only Vivian, Oliver, and Adrian left. (No Pierce, in my version.)_

**In Which Adrian Does Something Shocking**

I watched Adrian's face as he considered the terms of the bargain, just as I had done. And I knew the moment he realized that there was nothing stopping Ash from spending two hours in some really unpleasant ways, as long as they didn't end up with him dead or enslaved. Well, technically, there was nothing saying that Ash couldn't invite another demon over to snatch him, as long as it wasn't Ash doing the actual enslaving.

I was too angry at him to feel sorry for him. Of course I'd do what I could to prevent it, but…Gods, what had he been thinking?

"I'll just get the Parcheesi board all set up then, shall I?" I said, not hiding my disgust at the whole thing. "Well? Go on. Gloat. Monologue. Or is letting us writhe in anticipation part of the fun?"

Ash folded his arms. "Damnit Evie, you're going to spoil my fun, aren't you?"

"Should we start with physical torture, maybe? Oh, wait—you don't have any healing curses on you, do you? Better stick to psychological."

Ash opened his mouth, then closed it. "Fuck," he said, clearly having forgotten that limitation.

"Uh…can I say something?" Adrian asked.

"NO." Ash and I glared at each other after our joined reply. The glare went on a little longer than it needed to.

I cracked first. "Well? Since we're stuck here we might as well stir up some useful curses. Do the marking thing so we can get started."

Ash grinned, a grin of playful malice if there was such a thing. "Not stopping you. Go ahead. Mark him."

Dumbstruck, I glanced at Adrian, reviewed the bargain in my head, recalled Ash's careful wording. My mouth was still lagging behind my thoughts. "_What?"_

"I never said he had to wear _my_ mark. He's _your _little mouse. Go on. Claim him. Protect him from me. Mark him." He folded his arms, still grinning, but his eyes were anything but casual. "I can do it, if you want. He won't like it. I'm in a _really_ bad mood right now."

"No! You two did the bargaining, not me! I'm not getting involved! I'm certainly not going to slap a mark on him that says I own a piece of his_ soul_!"

Adrian, looking between us anxiously, stopped biting his lip. He was now, I noticed, bristling with invoked amulets. _Smart witch. Too bad a saltwater shower is all it'd take to make them all useless._ "Um. If I get a say? I'd rather have yours than his, Evie."

"_Too bad!_" I folded my arms, scowling at both of them now. "You made a deal with him, not me. I only marked Hope to save her from Zee and Newt. Your life's not in danger."

"Sure it is. Bargain was, a nice safe trip to California in exchange for a mark," Ash said, showing teeth. "Do you see a mark on him yet?"

_Oh hell._ I was back in a dark clearing at age sixteen, realizing I was about to die. Those were the words he'd used just before he'd ripped my life—and the lives of my four friends—to bloody shreds. My face and hands felt like they had frozen solid. The only part of me still moving was my heart, hurling itself around a suddenly too-tight cage. Everything else seemed to go white and blurry. A minuscule part of my mind watched from a distance, numb and horrified. A panic attack. The son of a bitch was going to send me into a panic attack. First I'd had in weeks, not since…I couldn't remember. Not important. "Don't, Ash." My voice sounded normal, if a bit flat.

Ash didn't seem to notice. "It's just a mark, Evie. You're blowing things way out of proportion." He placed a knife in my hand, pulled from somewhere. "Go on. You know the proper curse."

As if in a dream, I turned to Adrian. Adrian was more perceptive, and his concerned face filled my dimmed vision. "It's all right, Evie," he said.

No, it wasn't. He had no idea why I was hesitating. It was The Choice. Long ago Ash had made me choose between turning over my soul to him, or watching my friend be tortured. It was more subtle now. And it wasn't a choice, not really. Just a little mark of debt. A tiny mark of ownership of a soul. I'd marked Hope, after all. The first step down a road I'd refused. _Just take another step, save your friend. _How could I refuse now? Ash had threatened my friends' souls, but as long as they weren't _right there_ I could be as brave as I wanted and refuse to give in. But I couldn't do it, not when my living, breathing, soon-to-be-bleeding friend was before me. I couldn't watch that again. _Not again. _ I had to do this.

Therese was rebelling in my mind, furiously squirming. I was rebelling, too, but at least I knew why. It was a test. We both knew it was a test. I didn't know why she was so reluctant to do the demonic thing, when we usually disagreed about the proper course of action, but she was trying like mad to get the upper hand on my psyche and bury that knife into Ash's gut instead. I wrestled with her, hand shaking as it clutched the black handle of the knife. All I could see was Adrian's confused face, filling with trepidation, unaware of the source of my angst.

It felt like I stood there for days, surrounded by air that had gelled around me, struggling to draw breath. Adrian held out his hand, offering me his wrist. I recalled Rachel's mark, from Al…that spot. It was as good a place as any. "How does this work?" he asked.

"She gives you a shallow cut and invokes the curse. Doesn't even hurt," Ash said. His voice was loud in my head, unconcerned and uninflected. "When_ she _does it," he added, amusement smoothing the menace. Even turning my head to look at him was too much effort, not when I needed all my strength just to stay standing and keep Therese at bay.

Adrian nodded. His other hand steadied the knife, silently offering to guide it for me. Did he think I was hesitating because I was squeamish? Witches were used to drawing blood. This would be nothing, for either of us. I looked down as Adrian drew the blade across his skin. Blood welled up, but not much. I watched it snake red tendrils down his wrist, slowly. The scent of blood mingled with burnt amber and darkness. It wasn't the room shaking, it was me, alone, terrified, hiding from the blood and death that awaited me, as soon as it broke through my paltry circle—

"Invoke it," Ash ordered. I just stood there. "Don't you remember how? Need a refresher?" His voice was bitterly sarcastic.

"Evie?" The cut probably hurt. Was that why Adrian's voice sounded so strained?

"I can't," I said. Even the brightly scarlet drops of blood seemed to dim, hidden under the burning, pounding rush of my beating heart. The knife fell endlessly from my fingers, its clatter muffled when it finally reached the ground. Ash would hurt my friend. I couldn't even do the one stupid little curse that would stop it. Panic attack. Any time now it would crush me and grind me to dust. "I won't do it."

"Evie, what's wrong?" Adrian asked, voice reaching me through layers upon layers of surreal cotton.

"For the love of Newt," Ash said, and grabbed the witch, pinning him tight before Adrian even began to reach for the multiple defensive spells he'd prepared. Dazed, I watched Ash draw the cut to his lips, tasting the blood before he whispered the Latin word that registered the curse. Adrian hardly had time for a gasp of surprise before he went rigid in Ash's arms.

"Stop," I whispered.

Adrian moaned, struggling. Ash had pulled the witch against him with one hand, while the other tore off one amulet after another, hurling them aside. Ash was stripping him defenseless, in preparation for the real horror that would come. It was worse than if he'd started ripping off Adrian's clothing.

"Stop it," I said, louder.

"Oh, relax, Evie. I won't kill or damage him. That was part of the bargain. I just need his mind occupied for a moment." Ash's tone was of someone impatient and distracted.

His mind. He was in Adrian's head.

I slipped one of the bracelets off. Ley line power cut into the echoing emptiness previously filled only by my beating heart. Therese wasn't in charge; I was. This was me. I'd stop Ash. I had no idea what I'd do, perhaps just shove burning fire at him until he let go.

Adrian stopped struggling, breathing heavily but still unbroken. Or at least, he wasn't screaming in pain. Not yet. His eyes were closed as he turned his head, eyes shut in concentration as he fought whatever Ash was doing. Ash grunted with effort and Adrian shuddered, eyes squeezing tighter.

The second bracelet clattered to the ground.

_What in blazes are you doing now?_

Al's voice. But not like I'd ever felt it before. If a mental signature could claw its way out of the inferno of Dante's hell itself and rip a foul, blistered, tormented trail into the sky like a defiant meteor, it would sound like this. I cringed from it, but there was nowhere to go. It filled my head, hitting me with all the fury of a fallen star, or all the grief and betrayal of a falling angel. I screamed silently in terror, reeling away, trapped in my own head.

_Stupid bitch!_ Al seized control and I found myself bending, reaching for the silver that would cripple me again. _Get ahold of yourself and put it back on! I'm in no shape to-_

This violation…it was the last straw. The world went white, and with a roar of fury Therese rose like a phoenix from the ashes of my psyche and banished Al with a protective ward drawn from Al's memory, powered by ley line energy I'd sucked straight from his _chi_. My familiar hadn't been prepared for the maelstrom I conjured, and I heard his wordless denials and more frantic protests as he tried to claw his way back in. They were meaningless.

Nothing meant anything.

I was free. Power flooded me, as if I were the moon and entire oceans of power were being drawn to me. It was too much, too quickly. Dimly I heard Ash and Adrian shouting.

Someone grabbed my arm. I didn't like that.

The hand released me, went away.

I was hot. The last rational part of Evie realized that it was happening again, her consciousness was fragmenting. I needed something to hold on to. I reached for Ash, for my anchor, my _yaztaksh_.

He wasn't there.

Oh. _ Al_ had been my anchor, and I'd just banished his mind from mine. I had to let him back in. But the lines were screaming in me, the roar of creation as it prepared to rip my soul apart. Shouldn't I be terrified? I felt nothing, nothing but a gathering sense of numb, uncaring, impending destruction. I was beyond caring, beyond thought. Nothing remained but the energy flooding into me from the lines.

Pain suddenly lanced into me, like someone had jammed a cattle prod into my guts and lit them up like a Christmas tree. The energy in my _chi _ripped around like a whirlwind, leaving churning confusion and destruction in its wake. A moment later it gushed from me in a geyser of mind-numbing cold, the cold white fury of its passing and the utter emptiness behind it left too abrupt a shift for my frayed mind to take.

I had a splitting headache, when I came to on the couch in the corner, trussed up like a turkey in more layers of charmed silver chain than I could count. I didn't really wake up…rather, the noises around me began to resolve themselves into snatches of words, then argument, then conversation. When I could open my eyes, I saw two men sitting together at the large workbench, stirring up curses.

I had to blink a few times before I could focus, but no, it was true. Ash had Adrian stirring something. And Ash looked positively awful- shaking, pale, and haggard, on the verge of collapse. He held a bloody rag to his nose and his entire left side looked puffy and red. Adrian, by contrast, looked like he'd been born in a demon's spelling kitchen. His confident fingers were sure and competent as he alternately chopped, drew, signed, and wove the magic at Ash's direction.

I must have managed to make a noise, because they both looked my way. Ash's pained expression didn't change save for a softening around the eyes, but Adrian looked nearly ready to faint with relief. Ash grabbed him by the wrist before he could get up. "Can't stop here," he growled, voice hoarse and exhausted.

"Right," Adrian said, returning to his work. "Evie, give us a few minutes. I'm glad you're all right."

_Not going anywhere_, I replied silently, because my mouth didn't seem to work. I ached all over, feeling feverish and insubstantial. Oh shit. Had I damaged my aura again? Silently I tried to invoke the healing curse I had left, but nothing happened. All I had was the splitting headache, a soul-deep ache stemming from my dried up, empty _chi_ and loss of contact with the ley lines. What had I done? I tried to remember what had happened, what the hell I did, but the last thing I could recall was Al trying to take over my mind, after I'd shed the silver. I shuddered at the utter emptiness that came after- it wasn't emotion, it was a vacuum, pulling me apart. Nothing but a vast, glaring emptiness, like the one that had swallowed me the night I'd nearly blown up the northern hemisphere and Ash had spent hours piecing my soul back together. I'd foolishly cut the tether keeping me grounded, and was flung into the primal madness—

Panic ripped through me—could this happen again? I reached out to my _yazataksh_ for reassurance. I didn't care that it was Al, I just needed to know my _yazataksh_ was still there, still part of me. Nothing. Al didn't respond, not even the vague ramblings of a sleeping demon. Perhaps I should be relieved—Al was probably furious with me. I reached for the less substantial bond that linked me to Ash, as his familiar, and found that it, too, had vanished utterly. Vanished. As in, _was no longer there_. Completely severed.

My stomach dropped and my body shivered with sudden chill. Had Ash taken a new familiar? No, of course he hadn't. The possessive, jealous demon had always said he would only trade up, when it came to familiars, and how much better could it get than a demon female? But then…Ash was pissed at me. Really, truly pissed off. And Adrian…

My horrified eyes found Adrian's lanky frame again. _No. He hadn't. Had he? Oh God, please tell me he didn't really do it. _I swallowed, dreading what I'd see when I pulled on my second sight.

Adrian's aura, once orange streaked with blue, was now black. No sign of its former hue remained.

* * *

><p><em>Never Enough<em> (Epica)

Can't you hear me screaming, once again?  
>(Voices you can't hear)<br>Because you are consumed and incontent  
>With everlasting greed<p>

Don't you see me on my hands and knees?  
>(Begging and bleeding)<br>You're smiling as you bite the hand that feeds  
>But will you never see?<p>

Always wanting what your eyes can't see  
>Needing what your arms can't reach<br>Thinking you are in need  
>Always hearing what your ears can't hear<br>Feeling what your hands can't touch  
>Thinking you're incomplete<p>

(Enough)

It was never enough what I gave to you  
>All of the horror that you've put me through<br>(Never enough)  
>How can I make up my mind this time?<br>This is where I will draw the line


	17. The Venomous Truth

_I keep stealing little bits of time to write- a sentence here, a paragraph there...thanks again, Deus3xMAchina, for beta help!**  
><strong>_

**In Which Birds and Bees (and Bloodlust) Are Discussed**

The croaking sound I made alarmed even me. Ash made an irritated noise. "In a minute, Evie." He spoke a complicated invocation in Latin, which Adrian repeated back once, then continued to chant softly as he stirred. Ash smirked, looking pleased as punch. Adrian, from what I could see of his actions, didn't look distressed or even worried. He looked…well, shit. The guy looked confident and sure of himself, a far cry from the gawkish guy who'd stumbled his way into my life, then bumbled into my heart a few days ago.

I tried to move, but they'd really done a number on me. I moaned instead, realizing I couldn't speak. On top of the silver, they'd either gagged me or cursed me into silence. It was difficult to tell, through the shivery numbness tingling all over my body. Fair enough, since there were loads of curses that required only a word or a phrase to invoke—assuming one had access to a ley line, of course. Clearly they weren't taking any chances where I was concerned. I'd have been insulted, if I hadn't just tried to blow myself up. _Again._

Left to such grim thoughts, I rapidly spiraled into despondency. My family was dead. Ash had abandoned me, discarded our last link, had perhaps even allied with Al. Rachel had abandoned us all, and my elven allies were on her side, not necessarily mine. Adrian…well, who the hell knew what he thought of me now, but it couldn't be flattering. Al wanted me painfully dead, as did a load of elves and more than one other demon. I was shunned, and hell would freeze over before the Coven would forgive me for letting Adrian fall into Ash's trap—for letting him get suckered into being a _familiar_. I'd failed to protect a friend. I was bound and gagged and totally helpless in a demon's lair, in a dying supernatural world, and I'd just tried to nuke the man I was pretty sure I loved. This was pretty much rock bottom. I couldn't imagine how things could get worse, apart from finding that the emptiness inside me was due to the loss of my soul, now residing in a bottle somewhere next to all the other pitiful souls that Ash had captured over the millennia.

"Touch her and I'll rip your fingers off one joint at a time."

I jerked awake, opening my eyes in time to see Adrian pull his hand back quickly. He was quite close, concern brimming in his blue eyes. "Her eyes are back to normal," he reported.

"I told you not to freak out. She's fine. She's a tough bitch. Now step back before I have to maim you."

"What the hell is your deal, anyway?" Adrian didn't sound all that intimidated, for someone who'd just become a familiar to a demon. "You know I won't hurt her."

"I'm not worried about you hurting her. She's mine. Don't make me fuck you up on your first day on the job, twerp."

Adrian's face fell into sullen irritation. "Sheesh," he grumbled, meeting my eyes. "How do you put up with this?"

I made a small sound of bewilderment, eyes searching for Ash. He was lying on some cushions on the floor nearby. He was oddly red. I mean, demons were naturally red-skinned, something they played up or down depending on how otherworldly they wanted to look. But Ash was grey under the red, and I realized he was covered with smeared, bloody sweat. A vat of what looked and stank suspiciously like bile lay near his head. He looked like he'd been run over by a herd of wildebeests, with a few rhinos bringing up the rear. He certainly didn't look like he was up to fulfilling any of his threats, which probably explained Adrian's nonchalance.

"It's safe to take the chains off," Ash rasped, coughing until my own chest ached in empathy.

"And how the hell am I supposed to do that without touching her…?" Adrian was smirking, so it was probably a rhetorical question. He was already tugging at the silver chains, and they unclasped easily under his hand.

"You'll find a way, or you'll be twiddling your curses with busted fingers," Ash growled, then groaned and retched into the bucket. Nothing was coming up now. No wonder his voice sounded so dry and creaky.

"I'm so, _so_ sorry I had to do that to you," Adrian told me, peeling off another chain and coiling it neatly on a small storage frame. "But you really looked like you were about to do something crazy."

"Fucking _females_," Ash grumbled as he lay back, panting.

"And _he's_ no help. Geez, look at the poor sap. This is the best we could do, even after we slapped, like, three different curses on him."

"_Incompetent_ curses," Ash muttered.

"They worked fine," Adrian assured me.

Had I hurt Ash? Had Ash hurt Adrian? What was going on? I hummed in exasperation, indicating that this one-sided conversation was not acceptable, not in the least. Adrian glanced at Ash again. "How do you nullify the gag curse?"

"Fuck," Ash mumbled, and I agreed._ No fucking way _was Ash kissing me in his state—at least not without brushing his teeth first. "Give me a moment."

Adrian continued to unwind another chain. "I know you're probably confused and upset, but I just wanted to say that it's all right, he didn't force—" His voice cut off with an awkward squawk as he fell limp, as abruptly as if someone had just snipped his strings. After a little fumbling around, he forced himself back up. Ignoring my _mmph?_ of concern—followed by my squeak of horror—he kissed me. Then he collapsed again, flopping like a fish.

I worked my lips, feeling the spell fall away, and glanced at Ash fearfully to see his reaction. His eyes were closed, lips bent into a smirk. _O-kaaay…what just happened…?_

Adrian shook his head, patting himself. "Woah. Hell, man, you said you'd warn me before you did that!"

"Sure. Unless it's a life-threatening emergency. Your life _was_ in imminent danger, Thumper," Ash said serenely, eyes still closed. "God, your psyche is small."

_Thumper?_

"No, _yours_ is too _fat_." Adrian snickered. "At least you know it works."

"Still have to test it across the lines, but I'm pretty confident it's a solid link." Ash shifted on the cushions, groaning. "Explain all this shit to her. I have to rest for a few minutes. Remember I'm watching you."

Adrian turned back to me, rolling his eyes. "_Yeth_, math-ter," he lisped in an Igor voice.

I was still fuzzy, but I had a pretty good idea about just how much control Ash had over my friend. Forcing him to stir curses? Possessing him? "He's making you call him—"

Adrian laughed. "No way. It's in the contract. I could call him Mr. Pussywillow if I wanted to."

Ash coughed, the sort of cough that might be a laugh in disguise. "Not if you want to keep all your limbs."

A long silence followed as I gazed at Adrian, and he gave me a sort of sheepish look in return. "Before you ask," he said, as I opened my mouth, "the answer's no. He didn't force me. I agreed to it. It's a pretty complicated deal, actually. When I knocked you out, he was pissed—but after we chatted, he agreed that it saved your life, and probably his too. So I fulfilled the terms of our deal already, and your mark came right off."

I winced at the memory. Damn, that had _hurt. _Ash would have been seriously pissed at Adrian for daring to touch me, let alone smack me with an experimental earth charm! How had the witch survived? "What did you _do_?"

Adrian lit up like I'd given him a puppy, and launched into a technobabble explanation of his new improved souped-up demon-strength _chi_-disruption charm that I wasn't sure even my earth-magic colleagues back at the university could have followed. He might not have Oliver's lifetime of experience, but Adrian certainly had access to centuries of research that were forbidden even to top level academics. Ash was probably beside himself with glee at having caught such a motivated and talented witch. "No—I meant, what did you do to _him_." I interrupted, tilting my head at Ash. "He looks like death warmed over."

"Oh,_ that_. It wasn't me. In fact it's only thanks to me that he's not a hell of a lot worse."

"Did _I_ do it?" I asked, horrified. My memory was fuzzy on details, but I thought I remembered casting some sort of curse at whoever had laid a hand on me.

"No, no…look, I can't tell you everything—"

"He's ordered you not to talk to me?" Horror became outrage.

"No, he _asked. _He wants to tell you about that part himself. I can tell you other stuff."

"Oh." I felt myself deflate. It had to be bad, then. "But he'll be all right?" Adrian nodded, relaxing. "I'm sorry I couldn't protect you. You shouldn't have had to do this."

Adrian gave me an irritated look. "Weren't you listening? I'm here of my own free will. Evie, this is an unprecedented opportunity for someone like me."

I couldn't help just gaping at him. "You wanted this all along…?" The words I didn't speak hung heavily in the air for a moment. _Were you just using me to get to Ash…?_

"N-no," Adrian said, brows creasing at the catch in my voice. "But when I had the opportunity, I took it. I get the education I wanted, he gets the daytime help he needs. Not to mention…" He glanced furtively at Ash, who appeared to be out cold. "…I kinda get the feeling that things are going to hit the fan pretty soon. He's as worried about you as I am. And you need the help, uh, given…everything."

I couldn't speak for a moment. I mean, hell, I'd just about blown up two of only three people who gave a damn about me in the entire universe. I was pretty worried about me, too. Just hearing someone say it, though, made my throat tighten. Adrian had replaced me as Ash's familiar, partly for knowledge, but partly to help. _Me. _What did you say to someone who would do that for you? "Nobody's ever…put themselves out for me like this," I managed. "I'm not real sure what to say."

Adrian snorted. "I'm not the one putting my neck on the—" He stopped abruptly, eyes darting to the demon on the floor even though Ash hadn't moved. "Anyway, he was really persuasive when Newt stopped by to see what the hoopla was about."

I gasped. "_Newt _was here?"

"Oh yeah." Adrian shivered. "I mean, I've read about her, but seeing her_ in person_, well, I'm not going to forget that any time soon!"

"Why…?"

"She felt you in the lines, then felt you cut off, and came to investigate. Ash wasn't saying anything, so she, uh…" Ash winced. "Got into my head."

"Yeah. She does that."

"She's not supposed to be able to. You know? I mean, that's what I've read." He cleared his throat when I gave him a blank look. "'Cause she's, you know, a _she_. You're looking at me funny again. You do know, right? About demons and stuff?"

"Apparently not," I said, sparing Ash a glare. He was still as death. "But you do? Adrian, will you tell me everything you know? These assholes won't tell me anything important! If it hadn't been for Rachel, I never even would have known I was a demon at all!"

Adrian nodded. "Sure. I mean, there's not all that much, it's mostly just the little quirks of biology that make demons unique. So, you, uh, know about the venom thing that the men do?"

I nodded. "He told me it's for binding women. Making them…" I thought back to how he'd put it. "Less likely to kill the men. Sort of part compulsion, part mental, and eventually it triggers some kind of physiological response in us that, uh, encourages conception."

Adrian cocked his head. "Sort of. So, you're familiar with the vamp virus, right? Demon venom's sort of the same, except it's not a virus, it's the original factor that mutated the virus and ended up in humans, making them vampires. If you're a demon woman, it finds the right sets of cells and colonizes them. But if you're not, it can do all kinds of messed up things, depending on how mean the demon is."

I was feeling sick. "Like a parasite?"

"No, nothing so icky." Adrian smiled. "It's more like pheromones, in that it's inducing a response to his body in yours. Anyway, male demons are the ones with the serious mind powers. They've got abilities you wouldn't believe. There's rumors they can reach into the mind of a demon woman and pull her dreams into reality."

"They can. I've been in one. You'd never know it's not the real thing."

Adrian's eyebrows shot up. "Seriously? That is so freaking _cool_." He cleared his throat at the look I turned on him. "Right. So the venom helps them establish a connection. The more venom, the stronger the connection. Like a cell phone."

I blinked. "Say what?"

"You can have a cell phone, right, but it's not going to work without the towers."

I burst out laughing. "So when Ash bites me, he's building towers in my brain for his demonic cell phone abilities?"

"It sounds lame when you say it like that, but yeah. I bet it feels pretty good, too," he added.

I touched my hot cheeks. "Yeah. So go on."

"The woman has a choice at this point. If she doesn't want the connection, she's got pretty much a direct line into the guy's head, just before the venom begins to work. It's the most dangerous time for the guy. Because if she doesn't fry him the moment it starts to kick in, she won't be able to later. It turns on circuits in her head that put the guy in the "no-fry" zone."

It felt so good to laugh. "So say she doesn't. Then what?"

"It lasts a few months at most, unless the guy gives her more on a regular basis."

"Or if she resets herself with a curse," I added, because there certainly hadn't been anything stopping me from toasting Ash a few hours ago. I assumed I'd been out for hours- time enough for Adrian to brew up several curses, anyway. Adrian was looking blank, so I added, "There's curses that sort of reset your body to a previous state. Like the healing curse. Didn't you just brew one for Ash? Why's he still sick?"

"Well…we'll get to that in a second. But yeah. The active agents in the venom don't last more than a couple of months. The guy has to keep on biting her- which he likes just fine, because if you haven't noticed, they like the taste of blood. A lot. For the woman, getting dosed with venom regularly, it's a little addictive. It also activates abilities she can't usually access otherwise, which is a good thing, because if she could access them without a guy bonded to her mind, she runs a good risk of damaging her own mind permanently. But these help trigger what demons call, well, for lack of a better word, a mate bond. Only women can sustain it, and it gives them access to their own specialized mental abilities."

"The…creating worlds thing?"

"No, something even cooler."

I gave the witch a sidelong glance. "Sir Adrian Wister, do you have demon envy?" I was teasing, but the blush that lit him from neck to hairline would have put cherries to shame. I giggled. "Go on."

"So once this mutual mate bond thing has been established for awhile, OK, the woman's body prepares for conception. Here's the part where things are kind of weird—"

"Everything else so far _isn't_?" I muttered under my breath.

"So if they've been sleeping together, which they usually have by this point—"

"You mean there's pairs who didn't?"

"Well, conceivably. A lot of marriages were arranged. It probably it took years before a woman trusted a guy enough to let him bite her. Even if he did, she might not let him do it again, not often enough to establish a bond. It might take years, but they had to do it if they wanted kids."

"And every body-remodeling curse broke the bond? That must have been really irritating!" I thought back to Ash, and his chagrined admission that he'd managed to bind me for all of a day or two. It must have been pretty common, back in the day. I wondered if I were his first experience with the bond. It was possible. He was the last real demon born, after all. This system made demon reproduction sound fairly infrequent—all the women had probably been taken.

Adrian shrugged. "I'm sure they had some way to work around that. Anyway, the woman starts making venom of her own. It's temporary, and goes in monthly cycles, but once a month or so, she grows fangs, too. It signals that she's fertile. She also gets the same sort of taste for blood that the guys get, but only for her mate. I should probably mention that if, at any point, the woman is exposed to another male's venom, she gets really, really sick. From what I understand, demon guys don't give much of a damn if their mates are sleeping around, but her blood's totally off limits, always. It doesn't even matter if the rival's not even a demon, as we both saw."

My brow creased as I recalled Al biting me. Ash had been furious when he'd thought Al had been putting the moves on me—over the bite, not the moves themselves? Then why was he so pissed off about me kissing Adrian earlier today? It didn't make any sense. Then I recalled being out for hours following the night Ash had really bound me, with the clawing and the biting. I had no memory of those hours—had I been more than just sated? Had I been sick from Ash's venom interacting with Al's? Had Al even used venom? I shook my head, glad of the new perspective, even if things were still just as confusing as before. "Does a demon always have venom in his bite?"

Adrian shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe? They can turn it up or down, depending on how angry or aroused they are, but I don't know if they can turn it off completely. So at this point, the woman's got another choice. She can bite the guy, or she can suppress the urges and avoid it. If she does, she's pretty much guaranteed to get pregnant. Demons probably have curses to suppress either the bloodlust or the conception, but unless you're regularly sprouting fangs, you don't have to worry about it."

I humphed. "Why's it so different for witches?"

"It's not, not really. The monthly cycles are the same. A witch woman needs the pheromones from the man to start up the cycles."

"But they don't tear out their partner's throat!" I protested. "This just sounds really…icky."

"But think about it, Evie. No, really, think about it. Witches have to exchange fluids to conceive, like everyone else, right? But those who live and work together are always exposed to drops of each other's blood. And the tradition of borrowing someone's husband, if you're married to a human? Or if you really, really want to conceive? What's the ritual involved?"

I blinked. "You…share blood." Just a drop. You pricked your finger, they pricked theirs, you mingled the blood and spoke the blessing. "Holy shit."

"Same thing. It's just more, uh, salient for demons. I kind of get the feeling that when demons first had witches as children, they fixed them up a bit. You know, so they could pass for humans. Engineered out the fangs and the venom and whatnot. But they couldn't get rid of the blood requirement. It's still part of all of us."

I digested that for a moment. "What if she bit someone else?"

"She wouldn't want to. It's totally tied to her mate. Same thing with the other males. A mate-bound woman is pretty repugnant to them. An unbound demoness, though, had to have been irresistible. But if a demon can smell another's guy's venom in her, he's totally turned off. There's also the potential to make him get really sick, if she has enough of it."

OK, it was all starting to make sense. Especially the glares and the wide berth Rachel and I had received, that long ago Morning After in the demon mall. And Devi, approaching us as a harmless little girl. And Ash's behavior prior to that fateful night, where he'd pretty much bristled and postured and threatened any demon who'd gotten within ten feet of me. He hadn't bitten me at that point—I was still fair game. He hadn't dared to try until I'd invited him. Sure, he'd done it years ago, the night he'd marked me—but he hadn't known what I was, then. "So once I let him bite me, I'm safe from other demon males?"

Adrian nodded. "Pretty much. Once you've got enough venom to be bound, any guy who tries to nosh on you will end up puking his guts out. Except in special cases, where he'll die. But…again, I'll let Ash explain that part to you."

"I can't tell you how grateful I am that you're telling me all this," I said. "So one more thing- you said women have special abilities that are unlocked by this mate bond thing?"

He nodded, eyes wistful. "Normally only the guys can delve into minds and souls and mess around with them. But the bond allows the woman to sense and feel the minds around her. The male keeps out the outside influences, helps her interpret the sensations and categorize them, helps her communicate without doing any damage. Otherwise she's kind of like a big hammer. It's important because a demon mom's fully aware of her baby's soul, the instant it's conceived. So's the dad. The ability to hold a soul inside you, to nurture it—well, I mean, all moms do that, but a demoness can even cast curses on her baby, while it's still in the womb."

I gaped at him. "Why would she _want _to?"

"To make the baby strong, fast, able to defend itself. To begin training it while it's still developing. To fix any genetic problems. Who knows what else a demoness might do, to help her baby along?"

I was stunned and frankly appalled at the thought. But then, the demons had been at war with the elves ages before humans began recording history. Couple this with an infrequent birth rate, and perhaps it had been a very necessary thing.

"The important thing is that she has the power and the ability to hold a soul within herself, to shelter and nurture it, to create it and mold it. It doesn't have to be a baby, either. It can be _any _soul."

I humphed. Yeah, I already knew that. Spitting the unwanted soul _back out_ again had really been the trick, hadn't it?

"There's a down side, too. A woman's only supposed to be able to do all this delicate soulwork stuff if she's bonded to a mate. That's because the mate has to help her keep her own psyche separate. And there's a ton of hormonal changes that come with pregnancy that the male has to help her get through. And she can decide at any time to expel the soul within her. If her mate happens to die while she's pregnant, she pretty much has to if she wants to stay sane. And that's also a danger if her mate leaves her, or if he dies—she can go insane without him. She just can't keep her psyche together."

My lips parted, but I couldn't speak.

"I gather that there's a lot of demonesses who had problems keeping themselves together, even if they never mated and accessed their enhanced abilities," Adrian said carefully, watching me. "During training, all demons had to have spiritual anchors, sort of a substitute mate bond with an older, more experienced demon they trusted. Usually their parent, or a relative. Later, if a woman never mated, she either had to keep a familiar—and it had to be a demon familiar—or she might end up getting twisted by the lines. The guys could manage without, though they often stole humans or elves to protect their minds too. You know how ley line witches can go nuts? Demons can, too. Anyone can. Imagine a demoness, and the power she could wield, getting bent by all that energy. We're talking disasters of Biblical proportion, here. Mostly they happened before recorded history, and that's one of the major reasons the elves wanted to wipe the demons off the face of the earth. Who wants such dangerous, volatile beings around?"

I shivered. I knew where this was going. I needed such a bond. I resented the fact with every fiber of my being, but I needed it, I craved it, and I knew that there was only one demon I would ever accept.

"Even having help is no guarantee, Evie." Adrian's voice was serious now, and sad. "It's sort of a fact of demon life. The women use so much power that it drives them crazy in the end. The only way to avoid it is to either not use the power, to keep a powerful familiar who can filter the lines and hold it off, or to form a bond with a demon man who will do his best to keep you sane for as long as he can."

I still couldn't speak. If demons didn't have curses to help them live forever, perhaps this would never have become an issue.

"So that's the heart of it. There's one more thing you should know: After the elven curse on the demons created the witches, after the creation of the Ever After, the demon men cursed the elves—by sending their minds into the unborn elven children, every single one of them, and messing up their genes. Imagine you're a demon woman who's lost the ability to have healthy children. Now imagine you suddenly heard the screams of a million unborn children, and your mate, even good as he was, couldn't block them out. If a demoness was or had ever been a mother, that one terrible night pretty much sent them over the edge."

_The elves hadn't driven the demon women insane. The demons had done it to themselves_. I felt tears welling in my eyes. Al had been married once. Had he helped cast that curse? Had Al ever had children? Was that how his wife had died? I was a little amazed that I was still able to feel pity for Al, even now. Not that he'd appreciate it. "Did they know what would happen?"

"Of course we didn't." Ash said quietly, and we both jumped. "If we had…but we didn't."

"Is that…why Newt's insane?" I asked.

"Newt's a special case. She's…I think the word you use is _transgendered_? She cannot bear a child, but she has all the mental abilities of a female and thinks of herself thus. We defer to her femininity when she desires us to, though technically her body's male."

"Oh."

"To add insult to injury, she prefers females."

"Oh, god. Poor Newt." Then I blinked as the reality of Newt's current living arrangements smacked me upside the head. "Uh…she's not going to…with Hope?"

Ash stretched. "No idea. It's forbidden to give venom to one so young. Newt would be the first to rip out the throat of any male who tried it. But afterwards, once she's of age…?" He shrugged. "Newt's been more coherent since the girl arrived. And now she's booted everyone out of her household, even Nebby. Won't let any males near the girl. If I had to guess, I'd say she's either treating the girl as the daughter she always wanted, or she's defending her territory. Hard to say which at this point."

I reminded myself that neither Hope nor I really had much say over where Hope was living at the moment. But at least Newt didn't own her soul. That had to make a difference, right? Horrible as it sounds, I had my own issues to worry about. I pushed aside my fears and focused on Ash. "Are you recovering?" I asked. "What the hell's wrong with you?"

Ash was looking shaky, but I got the sense that something had shifted and the worst of his mysterious ailment was over. He sat up, rubbing his face. He glanced at Adrian. "Go stir something, will you? I need to talk to Evie."

"Ash!"

"It's all right, we agreed I'd tell you the background, and he'd tell you the rest." Adrian dug in his pocket and pulled out an amulet, invoking it with the easy swiftness of practice. "If I might make a suggestion…?"

He tossed the amulet to Ash, who caught it without smiling. He grunted when he recognized the charm, then gave his head a dismissive toss toward the lab bench. "Off with you."

I slid off the couch, still feeling shivery and weak, until I sat on the floor facing him. "What is it?"

"Truth amulet," Ash replied, turning it over in his fingers. It glowed green for a moment, turning his still too-pale skin grey and lending a ghastly cast to his face. He stared at the little disk as he turned it in his fingers. "He's right. It's critical that you believe what I'm going to tell you."


	18. Mon Cœur Irrité

_My title is inspired by another beautiful Baudelaire poem. It translates to "my irritated heart," which pretty much describes Evie's general state of being. But I imagine the poem being from Ash's point of view. I put it at the end if you're curious. _**  
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**In Which It Just Gets Better and Better…**

I almost said he didn't need it. But he was right. Ash had lied and lied and lied to me, and hadn't I threatened to make him wear a truth amulet around his forehead? I just nodded, accepting the gesture.

Ash mopped his blood-dotted face with a towel, leaving it looking worse than it had before. He glanced at himself, mess that he was, and gave me a chagrined half-smile. I didn't care. I just wanted everything to be as it had been before. It was a wistful, forlorn hope. He had nothing good to tell me, I knew it from his expression.

"The witch filled you in on the background. I should have told you from the beginning, but I told myself it didn't matter. Or if I occasionally had an attack of sense and thought otherwise, I suspected you'd simply refuse to be trained—which we couldn't allow." He watched the amulet instead of looking at me.

"Ash…"

"Just…let me finish. Newt came here while you were out. I explained things to her, and she insisted that she take over as your _yazataksh_, since you booted Al out of your mind. She tried to establish the bond with you, and you rejected it."

"She what?"

"Then Dali tried, and you rejected him as well."

I gulped. _Oh, shit._ "I don't trust them."

"And of course, Al is no longer eligible." Ash still wasn't looking at me. "Let me explain your situation. Whatever happened in the last week has…fundamentally altered the way you channel magic. Adrian explained about your need for an anchor. Do you agree with it?"

I nodded, subdued. I wasn't sure where this was going, but there was a growing sense of dread in my stomach. "What do you mean…._ altered_?"

Ash stared at that damned amulet until I wanted to tear it out of his fingers. "I didn't get all that clear a picture, when I peeked into your head back on the surface. Nor am I all that certain what happened today—"

Now _that_ pissed me off. "Don't be modest, Ash. I thought it was a very well-executed bit of psychological torture." Ash looked too honestly baffled to be faking it. I glared coolly at him. "_Do you see a mark on him yet? Mark him or I'll torture him in front of you?"_

Ash's face remained mystified. "Yeah, I was messing with you both, but—"

"Messing with me? Making me relive fucking _Greg_ all over again?"

Ash's mouth fell open.

"Do you honestly _not remember_?" I was beside myself with outrage. "You wanted to make me cross a line! Then when I wouldn't, you started torturing him!" I exclaimed.

"What? No I didn't," he insisted.

"It's true," Adrian piped up from the corner. "Surprised the hell out of me, too, given what I was expecting, but, he, uh, wasn't _hurting_ me."

Ash gave the witch a quelling growl, but his eyes held a wince. He was shaking his head as the significance of his words to my battered psyche sank in. "Shit. Shit, shit,_ shit_. Evie, I didn't mean…I didn't mean to. Fuck."

Tears of embarrassed frustration filled my eyes. "Seriously? _Seriously?_ My god, Ash! Are you _that _dense?"

Ash's gaze returned to the disk in his fingers, which were spinning and flipping the hapless truth charm with dizzying speed. "Apparently," he said quietly. It was still green, had been green the entire conversation. "Look, I was upset. I wasn't thinking."

God, I wanted to smack the idiot, but he looked so defeated and sorrowful, like a wounded puppy. And it was the closet he'd ever come to actually apologizing. My heart still ached and pulsed with hurt, but it was difficult to maintain the anger for very long in light of this monumental occasion. "All right," I said finally. "I believe you. Go on. You were talking about last week. What Al did to me." I blinked. "Al…. is he all right? I know I kicked him out, but the idiot tried to take me over when I took the bracelets off."

"He tried to take control…?" Ash smacked his forehead. "_Idiot,"_ he muttered in vehement agreement. "He's fine. Or will be when he recovers." He finally met my eyes. "Evie, what did he do to you? Your spindling, it's…what the hell was he teaching you?"

I humphed. "Al didn't teach me shit. He just increased my capacity."

"Then what bonehead…" Ash's eyes narrowed. "Evie…who taught you to spindle line energy? Was it Devi?"

"Devi? No! Ash, I taught _myself_. I worked it out on my own, years and years ago. From what you hinted at back in that clearing, when I was a kid. It's not like it's all that difficult, once you get the hang of it. Anyone could do it."

Ash was looking utterly horrified. "_You never had proper training…?_ And Al—oh fuck. Evie…when you say that Al increased your capacity, what exactly do you mean…?"

"I mean that he pumped me full of line energy until my brain was raw and bloody, charring paths through my neurons until I was unconscious, that's what I mean!" I snarled. "Let me guess…there's a nicer way to do it?"

"_Algaliarept…" _Ash squeezed his eyes shut and threw his head back, grimacing and swearing in some guttural dialect. Then he let out a shuddering breath, hanging his head. "I don't understand it," he said finally, rubbing his temples. "I don't understand why you went to _him_. If you thought I was dead, why not escape the Ever After?"

I'd wondered myself. Why hadn't I chucked it all and run away? It had all made perfect sense at the time. It all seemed so logical. I had to stay with someone who'd teach me. Someone who wouldn't hold back.

_Someone who'd make me suffer._

"I had to," I said, voice catching. "For not…because I didn't…" Ash's red eyes fixed on me with sudden burning intensity, and I faltered. No, if I was going to say this, I was going to fucking _say it. _It was time to come clean. "Because he told me…he said he could have saved you. If I hadn't stopped to bargain. Because I wouldn't just give over my soul. He said, if I had, you'd be alive. If I'd…really loved you…I'd have given up my s-soul. To s-save you. But I didn't, and you d-died, and I didn't p-protect you, s-so…"

"So you let him punish you." Ash dropped his gaze as I choked up completely, giving nothing of his feelings away. His voice, too, was simply quiet, no inflection whatsoever.

_Damn it! Damn it you stupid fucking demon, I just confessed that I fucking love you and you're not even going to say a damned thing?_ I didn't know if my tears were tears of fear or rage or just sheer humiliation. I tried to at least get my hitching breaths back under control.

"Evie," Ash said, staring at the disk. It had glowed green at my words as well. "Listen to me." His voice was rough. "Al…what he did to you, he...Evie, it can't be fixed."

"Can't be…"

"The paths he tore into your mind, they're permanent now. The way you're channeling the lines, it's…Newt's never seen anything like it. I can see how it happened, now, but…" Ash sighed again, a long and painful sound. "Evie, Al crippled you. Both times you tapped the lines unbound, without the silver, you burst out of control. I was confused at the time, at how wrong it seemed, but you were upset, and…I was upset too. I didn't see it. The damage to your psyche, it's progressed too far. Al couldn't have known. He couldn't have known that you weren't taught to spindle properly. If he had, he'd _never _have…shit, not even at his worst would he take such a risk with your mind, not with how important you are to us, to…."

My head hurt, my throat ached, and the shivery feeling was back in force. "I'm…_crippled_? Like Newt?"

"No, not like Newt. Evie, your brakes are gone. Without an anchor, you'll risk soul-death whenever you tap a line. What the witch said about familiars, it's a bit exaggerated. We all need them for training, but once trained, it's optional. Newt can handle being on her own. Other demonesses chose independence for long stretches between familiars, linking with others only when needed for seriously powerful castings. We use familiars for convenience, mostly. But you will _always_ need one, someone trying you to reality on the deepest level. You can _never_ be without an anchor again. Do you understand me? The damage is permanent. You _cannot_ use the lines without one, not even for the simplest little spell."

"No! I had brain damage before, from the thing you did when I was sixteen. Al's curse cured it!"

It couldn't be true! This was orders of magnitude worse than anything I could have imagined. I stared at the disk in his hands, willing it to at least go blank, but it was green. When had the truth become so hateful? What had I done to Al, that he'd wounded me so grievously? Or had did it go back even farther, back to that clearing in the woods and the energy that had fried my _chi _so badly that I had brain damage? God, was this ultimately Ash's doing? Or my own, crowing over my own cleverness in figuring out the demon secret?

"It didn't. The damage is on more than a physical level, Evie. It's in _how_ you channel the lines. It's in the way you've separated your own psyche in your head."

"Therese," I murmured.

"Was it Therese that Al was torturing, Evie…?"

I nodded numbly. Of course it was. Evie was the sensible one, who put grief aside for the practical here and now, because there was long-term survival to think of, and a girl who needed help. Evie was the one who saw a logical need for increasing her spindling capacity.

Therese was the one who was ruled by her mysterious "demon instincts," which Evie considered primitive and refused to even try understand, let alone accept. Therese was the dangerous side, the side capable of killing, who flew off the handle and was deaf to reason. Therese was the one who'd fought for her demon, and lost him.

Therese was the one who had goaded Al into opening the channels of her mind so that she could access her full powers.

_But Evie was the one who knew how to spindle. _

"No," I said, but I believed him. It was more of a negation of my entire life. I couldn't have believed there were still more horrors for me today, more tears to shed after so much agony, but there were, and they just ran from my eyes in a constant, inevitable stream. Crippled? Dependent on an anchor forever? I'd always fought so hard. Always alone. I'd always been so proud of my independence. All those years, hanging on despite the alcoholism, the nightmares and the panic attacks. I'd suffered a terrible trauma as a teen and I'd picked myself right back up and coped. I'd surfed the gripes and drama of egotistical faculty and roughly six thousand students without flinching. I dealt with demons and won. I'd been tortured and I'd survived. I took on an elf trying to kill me, and I'd killed him instead. I'd survived the fucking Turn and the witchhunters who'd murdered my parents! I was so proud, and so strong, and I'd never needed _anyone's_ help, and… "No. _No_. I'll retrain myself to do it right, damn it."

"It's burned into your psych—"

"I don't fucking care! I'll find a way!"

"Maybe there's a way." Ash conceded, though his tone was far from hopeful. "But right now, if you have any desire to keep using magic of any kind, you need to choose an anchor," Ash said, voice flat and hoarse. "Newt didn't even want you to wake up without one, but you fought every damned demon who tried. They even called in Devi, and you nearly burned his head off."

"Why not _you_…?" I whispered, then realized something even more dreadful. _Oh god. You…don't want me anymore, do you? You wanted me because I was strong and powerful, and now you think I'm fucked up beyond repair, and you don't want me._

I felt Ash's hand enclose my chin, angrily forcing my gaze to his. I'm sure my thoughts were clear as day on my face. "Stupid, _stupid_ woman," he growled. "Evie, I tried to form the bond with you, while everyone was here—and you rejected me, too."

I felt the blood drain from my face. "I did…?"

Goddamnit, that fucking little green amulet. Was there anything worse than being forced to hear such truths? But I'd been so betrayed…everyone had turned on me today, and I'd thought that at least I could count on Ash to still want me even if I'd screwed up with Adrian a little, and he had gone and pulled that shit on me, and I just…oh God. Of course I'd rejected him. And he hadn't even known why.

"You hurt me," I said, hating how childlike it sounded. "I'm tired of being hurt."

"You and me both," he said without inflection. He coughed, clearing his throat. "Look. You have to decide, now. Either you accept me as your _yazataksh_, or you give it up. All of it. Everything. You never tap another fucking line, you never twist another fucking curse, you give up everything that…that we—"

"Uh, that wasn't quite—"

Adrian ducked as Ash's curse exploded against the wall over his head. "Witch, you will shut your trap or I will fucking kill you, deal or no deal, _do you understand_?"

I'd jumped, but Ash's words hadn't been a lie—the amulet was still green. Ash turned back to me and took my hand, gripping it tightly. "I'm asking you to allow me to be your _yazataksh_, nothing more. It's not a relationship, not a mate bond, nothing you don't want, unless... Evie, this is your chance to turn your back on all of it. Give it all up, the demon in you that you despise, the magic that will drive you insane, dependence on someone else…and no more shit from me."

I bit my lip and shook my head. I was shaking all over, and the headache was getting worse. "You'd let me go?" I asked finally, feeling Therese twist within me in disbelief and grief.

"Noone else can have you. I won't bend that far." Ash's mouth worked as he fought for words, and I could see what it cost him. "For all my talk…shit, Evie, I can't keep you here unless you're willing. I want you to want…to be here."

Had he almost said _I want you to want me? _I was so terrified of blowing this, or being wrong. Or maybe I was terrified of being right. Even Adrian waited with baited breath and gobsmacked expression. There was more going on here, I could tell—Ash was deviating from whatever script Adrian had been expecting.

But he wasn't _lying._

I took the plunge. The truth charm was right here, it was no time for holding back. "I'm _afraid,_ Ash," I admitted. "I'm damaged goods. What if…in a hundred years, or a thousand, when all this is resolved and there's plenty of other demonesses out there to choose from—"

"Stop it, Evie." Ash sounded furious, and my delicate hand-bones ached from his fierce grip. "It. Wouldn't. Matter. This is for fucking _life_. You choose me, there's no going back. Unless some fucking miracle happens in your head, there's no changing your mind when you get bored of me or grow to resent my intrusion. I have to delve deep into your subconscious for full damage control, deep enough that breaking it would be fatal for both of us. Do you understand? You'd have too much of me bound within you for me to survive your death. And you'd be tied to me. The Ever After may perish, and us along with it. Or a miracle could occur and we could live another thousand years or more—but if I ever die, your life will end, too."

_Holy shit._ "It's either that or give it all up?" I asked, the words barely making it out of my constricted throat.

"Yes."

"And you still want this? You'll take this responsibility? Why?" A sudden terribly unflattering suspicion came into my head, as if a mini-Al were there on my shoulder whispering into my ear. "Is it to make up for your mistake? Fix up your guilty conscience?"

"_Damnit,_ woman!" he snarled. "Why are you drawing this out? Do you need more time? Do you enjoy watching me squirm? NO, that's not why, not the way _you_ mean it! You go on and on about choices. Well, this is it. I'm giving you a fucking choice!"

The amulet was green.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Adrian jiggling his leg as he watched us, riveted, like we were the best damned soap opera he'd ever seen. I wondered whether he was rooting for us or breaking us up in his head. It turned out that he was eager to participate. "For the love of _God_, man!" he burst out, "_Tell her_ what you told Newt, you idi—" The witch toppled off his chair with a squawk at Ash's glare and gesture, and I could almost hear the curse zipping his lips shut.

"What did—"

"_Fucking familiars._" Ash refocused on me, estimated the damage. "I'll _tell _you. I will. But you have to decide _first_."

Still green.

_He's not going to say anything either way, is he? The one time I desperately need a crumb of hope, he's not going to give me a damned thing!_ "Kaviashemedaeva, you want this? You honestly _want_ to be tied to a broken, fucked up demoness?"

"Already _tried_, didn't I?" Ash's face was fanged, feral, and ferociously angry, and I suddenly got it. I'd already humiliated him in front of everyone, and here he was taking a risk and asking me again. The demon in front of me was just as terrified as I was. And probably just as broken and fucked up as I was, too. Why had I never seen it before? And we'd had this conversation before, hadn't we...? I'd never truly believed he was in it for the long haul, had I?

_Stop asking if I fucking want to be here!  
>Have I not proved to you how deadly fucking serious I am…?<br>You express your doubt, every time you ask. Your...uncertainty. Do you not believe I have the power to back up every fucking thing I say?_

"If you can't-" he growled, words barely distinguishable.

"Okay," I said, cutting him off.

"What?"

"Okay. I agree. We'll do it. I'll stay."

The relief that flooded his face was even more eloquent than a poetic confession of love. He reached for my cheek, lightly touching my temple. "You're certain?" he asked, voice still throaty.

I nodded, heart pounding as if it had stopped for a few minutes and had to catch up. Everything had shifted, and I still wasn't sure where we stood, but two things were very, very clear. I'd rather stay with this man then give up everything I was, even for a chance at a normal non-demon life. And this man wanted me. Not just any demoness, not a powerful playmate, but _me_. Damaged psyche and all.

He closed his eyes, years and fears falling from his features. "Okay then. Let's do it now.

"Open your mind to me, Evie."

I did, and he slipped into my thoughts without the least resistance. It was tentative at first, and I sensed his fear that I'd lash out at him, but his confidence grew as I relaxed. Gently, like a lover parting the many-layered petals of a rose to catch its scent, Ash carefully sifted through the layers of my mind, finding my little, frightened, wounded heart. He cupped it with care, caressed it, and with a feeling of utter completion, I felt him reestablish a link to it.

_Remember, once, you told me about some human saying? How if you wanted to keep something, you should let it go? _

Hearing his voice in my mind again…I lost it. I was sobbing, but it was the almost unbearable happiness of welcoming home someone long gone and much beloved. I'd _missed_ him there, in the back of my mind. I didn't try to hide the emotion, but bathed him in it, lavished it over him.

_And I told you that was crazy talk? That that sort of sentimental bullshit is for idiot humans, and that you were well and truly stuck with me, and a real demon doesn't _ever_ let someone go?_

Of course I remembered. It had been playful banter, and I'd laughed at his affronted reaction to the idea. I didn't bother answering. He could see it all- my grief, my rage, my fears, and that tiny little bit of hope that hadn't been extinguished.

_Well, I'm never doing it again, Evie. Ever. _

Eyes closed, I just clung to him, forehead pressed to his.

_Damnit, woman, I'm trying to be profound, here. Say something._

He wanted acknowledgment that he'd been a good boy, doing the right thing and all. As if having me surrendering and sobbing and totally incoherent with relief wasn't enough._ Ass_, I replied, deciding that was as good an endearment as any demon could want.

_Hey now…. not in front of the witch,_ he said, that old cockiness back in his mental voice. _It's bad enough that he saw all the shit that went down when Newt was here. How the hell do I keep him in line now? He already thinks I've gone soft as paste. _

I opened my eyes, sniffed, and wiped my eyes with my shirt, and looked at the witch in question. Adrian was grinning, the smile equivalent to a big, stupid _d'awwwwww_. "You're going to tell her the rest, right?" he said, practically bouncing on his chair.

"Maybe _you_ ought to, Thumper," Ash said, face surly. "Since you find it so fucking entertaining."

"Why 'Thumper'?" I asked.

"Come on, the way he's always jiggling his leg or tapping his foot like that?" Ash saw my blank look. "You know. Thumper. The rabbit. From _Bambi_?"

"You've seen _Bambi_?" An involuntary, incredulous smile curved my lips. It felt good. "_You…?"_

Ash shrugged. "What? _Everyone's_ seen Bambi," he said defensively. "Pop culture references are _important_," he added, when we both continued to smirk at him. "You have to know them if you want your prey to think you know_ everything_."

"_I _haven't seen it," I said, and the laughter threatened to escape containment. "Do demons have Disney cartoon night, too? I never got an invitation to _that_."

"I'll bet he got all teary-eyed when Bambi's mother died," Adrian said.

"What? She _dies?_" I exclaimed with exaggerated horror. "Oh, sure, way to go and spoil it for me," I said. Perhaps the giggle that bubbled past my lips bordered on hysterical, but it still felt good.

"Fuck you both," Ash grumbled under his breath, surreptitiously tucking something behind his back. "I_ laughed_. We all did."

"Well, one of you has to tell me the rest of the story, or I'm going to curse both of you into next week," I said, conveniently forgetting that I couldn't even curse a baby deer right now.

Ash forced himself to his feet. "I'm going to have a shower," he said, and vanished.

_Coward._ "Well…?" I demanded of the smirking witch.

"Newt was going to kill you," he said, sobering. "When you wouldn't accept anyone, even Ash? She said you were too dangerous and she had to put you down. God, she was furious about it. She said she'd kill Al and Ash, too, but the other demons in the room reminded her that she couldn't. Ash broke loose from the demons holding him and grabbed you, ready to take on Newt. He said he'd bet his life that he could make you change your mind. And that you were his and he'd rip the head off of anyone who tried to touch you."

"What?" _This was __**my**__ Ash? No fucking way._

"Newt got all weird and in his face. And all the other demons winced like she'd mentally smacked them down, and Newt and Ash got quiet and just…stared at each other. I think they were talking with their minds."

"She probably booted the others out of the collective so they could have privacy," I said.

"Well, anyway, they stared and stared, and all the while Ash is standing over you, claws and teeth bared, daring anyone to come any closer. He and Newt seemed to come out of the trance, and Newt looked pissed and tired, but sort of smug. She announced that she'd come to a decision. If you refused Ash, you'd die instantly. The other demons thought it was hilarious, her giving in to Ash's pleas, but they all agreed to give you one more chance. Together Newt and Dali put a death curse on you that would trigger if you said no."

I felt cold, sick, and prickly. "You're not serious." _How had Ash been able to lie to me? This wasn't what he'd said at all. The amulet should have been red as blood!_

"It gets better," Adrian said, eyes shining like this was some kind of pretty little fairy tale, and not my screwed-up life. "The minute everyone was gone, Ash and I got to working on another curse. He couldn't nullify the curse they'd put on you without everyone knowing, but he could divert its effects to someone else. He stuck another curse on you, too, in case the first one went off. It'd leave you cut off from the collective, with all your abilities burnt out of you. You could never tap a line again, never use magic except charms made by other witches. Then I could take you back to reality, and tell you everything. In effect, he was inspired by Rachel- he was going to fake your death."

Floored didn't begin to describe what I felt. "But…what about _him_?"

Adrian threw up his hands. "Don't you get it? He was going to take the brunt of Newt's curse on you, if you said no, because _someone _had to! Evie! _He was going to die for you!_"

* * *

><p><strong>SONNET D'AUTOMNE<br>by Charles Baudelaire**

_Ils me disent, tes yeux, clairs comme le cristal:  
>"Pour toi, bizarre amant, quel est donc mon mérite?"<br>- Sois charmante et tais-toi! Mon coeur, que tout irrite,  
>Excepté la candeur de l'antique animal,<em>

_Ne veut pas te montrer son secret infernal,_  
><em>Berceuse dont la main aux longs sommeils m'invite,<em>  
><em>Ni sa noire légende avec la flamme écrite.<em>  
><em>Je hais la passion et l'esprit me fait mal!<em>

_Aimons-nous doucement. L'Amour dans sa guérite,  
>Ténébreux, embusqué, bande son arc fatal…<em>

Your eyes like crystal ask me, clear and mute,  
>"In me, strange lover, what do you admire?"<br>Be lovely: hush: my heart, whom all things tire  
>Except the candour of the primal brute,<p>

Would hide from you the secret burning it  
>And its black legend written out in fire,<br>O soother of the sleep that I respire!  
>Passion I hate, and I am hurt by wit.<p>

Let us love gently. In his lair laid low,  
>Ambushed in shades, Love strings his fatal bow…<p> 


	19. As You Wish

_It only took 19 chapters to get to the lemons…? I'd planned to draw it out a lot longer. _

_And surely you didn't think Ash was telling Adrian the truth, did you...?__ *wicked grin* (and why the heck did I give my three male leads "A" names, anyway? Probably because Adrian was meant to be a bit player, but he started hogging the spotlight.)  
><em>

**In Which Evie Gets Her Usual Answers From Ash**

_Told you about that, did he? For the love of Newt, Evie, he makes it sound like some grand romantic gesture or something. _Ash was completely unphased by the silent chewing-out I'd given him. _And what a gullible twit. I wasn't aiming it at myself, I was aiming it at him._

I'd given Adrian's story a few minutes to sink in, then phoned up my showering demon on our newly reestablished mental cell phone to bitch at him. I certainly didn't want to disappoint him—not when he was so obviously expecting it. He'd run away from witnessing the big reveal, but ha! Now he'd never be able to hide from me again! _He's not that stupid. It's not exactly rocket science to guess where a curse is aimed. You couldn't have fooled _me_ like that, and he knows about ten times more about stirring than I do._

_So you say. _Ash's mental voice was amused, relaxed and playful._ Even if you're correct, it's hardly as meaningful a gesture coming from me, now, is it? Assuming the curse does what he says it does. Have you forgotten that death isn't exactly a permanent state of being for me?_

I paused, deflating. _Huh__. Good point. _Then I recalled that both Newt and Dali had combined forces to cast whatever curse was on me, though—how hard was I to kill? And surely they'd taken Ash's stubbornness into account when they cast it? _Still, a death curse that takes two demons to cast probably packs a pretty big wallop. You're sure you'd have survived?_

_I told you, I aimed it at the witch. The fool couldn't see it past all the stars in his eyes._

_And I told you, you're so full of shit that your aura's brown under all that black. _

Smug masculine satisfaction poured off him like the clouds of steam. I knew Ash was still showering, because I could sense his heavy-lidded pleasure he felt as he turned up the heat. Either the bond was truly deeper, as he'd said, or he was trying to distract me—quite effectively, I should add. _It's a moot point. I knew you would choose me. It was a calculated risk._

_That is such bullshit! If you were so certain, you wouldn't have bothered with making a second curse!_

_Perhaps he's mistaken in what he thinks it does? _

My new _yazataksh_ or not, he was still able to rile me up and piss me off with exquisite ease. Now I had no idea what the actual truth was. Was it even really a death curse? I only had Adrian's word for it. _Quit messing with me! Do I still have a death sentence hanging over my head or not?_

_Yes. If you ever wrest free of my control, we'll both die. So for the love of little green apples, don't try it._

_Is that one of the curses you stuck on me?_

_No._

The ass was enjoying himself far too much. _Then what? When did this whole "perish together" business come in? Did Newt do that?_

I could almost hear Ash laughing, felt waves of amusement tipped with sensual eroticism stroking me…or perhaps it was Ash, stroking himself and sending me every detail of the sensation. Need blossomed in my core, and I felt my body grow taut with sudden anticipation. I kept myself from groaning aloud only with difficulty, conscious of Adrian hanging out nearby._ Your witch friend was invoking Shakespeare on me. Do you not also find it a romantic situation?_

_NO! _

_See, now this is why I want you as a mate. _His affection peeked through the layer of smirking satisfaction.I stumbled over it in my head, trying hard and failing not to be flattered. _You're not fooled by all the sentimental bullshit. You see it for what it is really is: if I can't have you, no one shall._

A mutual hatred of _Romeo and Juliet_ was hardly a basis for a healthy relationship, though, and I was still annoyed. I really had to know one thing._ Ash, you offered me a choice between you and giving everything up. It wasn't "choose me or die," or that fucking amulet would have turned red when you said I actually had a choice._

_Mmm. Are you so certain of that? I did word it most carefully._

_Ash, is it at** least** true that some unspecified person was going to die if I'd refused you?_

_That much was true, yes._

_And you didn't think that might have influenced my decision?_

_Of course it would have. __The witch totally expected me to use it to convince you. Nearly gutted him when he tried to spill it._

_Ash! If I'd said no—_

_Whatever followed, you'd never have seen it coming. I owed you that much, at least._

_So it __**was**__ me who'd have died? _

_I didn't say that. Surely the witch can recognize elements of a curse for forgetfulness when he sees them…?_

_Wait-so it **wasn't** me…?_

_Hmm. Perhaps he didn't because they weren't there. _

_Damnit, Ash, I'll fucking go crazy if I don't know the truth. _I was just about going crazy from the fleeting glimpses of hot, slick, hard, wet skin he kept flashing my way, but I was determined not to give in to the growing temptation to jump in there with him. He'd _win_ if I did that, and that was no way to start the rest of my crazy life with him, was it…?

_Then you'll just have to learn all you can about stirring, won't you? I know the witch was taking notes. However, hypothetically speaking, if you were to reject me, and if I were sentimental enough about you to find a way to fake your death instead of indulging in the by far more satisfying and vengeful route of dancing on your ashes, I would of course have taken into account your guilt at causing the death of someone else. What point would there be in letting you survive if you then go on to drink yourself to death? Or letting you remember my summoning name, for that matter. Last thing I'd need at that point would be you calling me up and bitching at me over my handling of things._

Damn. A good demon could convince someone that down was up and green was gold, and Ash was one of the best. _You're such an asshole, Ash. You should have_ told_ me the stakes were higher._

_No, I shouldn't have. _His mental voice was suddenly serious._ You're here because you want to be. That's the _only_ thing that should have factored into your decision. I'm sure the witch agrees with that much, at least._

_And that's why he was practically cheerleading for your side? _

_Idiot witch. I'm quite fond of him, actually. Thank you for ensnaring him for me._

Guilt jabbed me in the gut- that was hitting a little close to home. I _had_ ensnared him, hadn't I? Unwittingly, but here he was, because I'd piqued his curiosity, made him start viewing demons as potentially sympathetic, and led him here. It was irrational and unwarranted, and damn it Adrian had made his own decision! _You know, it's a really good thing you're fucking hard to kill, Ash, because I'm about to try. _

_You know where to find me, love. _Ash turned up the heat again and sent me the full enticing sensations of hot water on bare skin, of hard flesh and scented steam. I nearly lost my balance, they were so strong. And oh my God, the want, the hunger, the desperate need that flooded me at this latest invitation was just this side of irresistible. If I hadn't already desired him so badly, I'd have been absolutely furious that his new link with me allowed him to tap directly into my insatiable id and fan the flames into a bonfire. It promised depths of passion that I wasn't sure mortals were meant to experience, but there was no fear, no anger…just pure, raw, animal lust. _And if it makes you feel any better, the witch did just fine. He got the better end of the deal, to be honest. Took full advantage of me in my moment of weakness. _

He was right. Adrian had told me the deal, and he'd definitely come out on top. Ash must have been pretty desperate to get those curses by that point. _Like you are right now…?_

His laughter was smug and somehow, proud. _Weak is one word I'd never use to describe you, love. And you're resisting me, aren't you? _

Only by the skin of my teeth…sheesh. I wasn't sure why it was important to me to resist jumping to wherever he was to shag him silly, but it was. Something about not letting him lead me around by my libido, maybe? If he'd just_ asked_, I would have leapt up to join him in a heartbeat, but it might set a dangerous precedent to let him manipulate my subconscious to get his way. I wasn't angry about it, and didn't sense that he was, either. Instead, it felt like he was playing with me, testing out our new bond and exploring our new boundaries, and wasn't at all upset or deterred by my resistance. Demons were patient beings, after all.

I was damp with sweat when I jerked myself upright, shook my head, and opened my eyes, demonic laughter echoing in my mind. I was still sitting on a stool near Adrian, who'd resumed cooking up some complicated curse with a grin on his face and a spring in his step. God help me if it didn't feel downright homey in here, in hell's kitchen, in the reeking Ever After, with a demon in my head and cursed bracelets on my wrists, and a new familiar puttering around giving us a hand with the stirring. I couldn't remember when I'd last felt so ridiculously happy, under all the ire. Sure, my life had just handbasketed its way to a newer, deeper circle of hell. Sure, I had fucked up my magical abilities and nearly blown up people I cared about. Sure, I was now tied to Ash permanently, or at least until I figured out how to train myself to work around my new disability. Sure, I had a death curse hanging over my head—well, two, if you counted what the elves were threatening to throw at me if I failed my mission. But even if I couldn't get the true story out of him, I knew at least one solid fact: for my sake, _Ash_ had challenged a roomful of demons, including _Newt._

God, I wished I could have seen that. That was going to make me glow for a good long while.

_How are you feeling?_

He sent me the equivalent of a purr, his stroke across my mind like silk between my thighs._ Much better. _My bones turned to jelly the moment his focus shifted from scrubbing and playing. He was ready and waiting for me, and he _wanted_ me, sending the full force of his desire spiraling through my veins in invitation._ Come to me—the witch already got enough of a show. He doesn't get to watch this part._

_Yes._ Oh God yes.

I gave Adrian a quick, "He's calling me," and stood, but apparently that wasn't fast enough for Ash. I appeared beside him before I had finished speaking. I spared a single thought regarding clothing that was now soaked, but thinking was banished the moment his lips met mine and my world dissolved into steam, heat, and the heady scent of aroused demon. I gasped for breath when he broke the kiss, irritation already dissolved into slick, wet pleasure as his strong hands cleared away the annoying fabric covering me. Then we were pressed together, tingling line energy dancing and arcing between us wherever we touched. It was electric, heady, nearly more than I could bear, and I craved more, so much more.

Mine.

He really was mine, now. _My_ demon.

I raked my nails over his skin as our tongues slipped and danced. He made a deep, hungry noise that melted my knees and the rest of my restraint. His chuckle was a deep rumble in his chest as he spun me about and wrapped me in strong arms, sliding his hard length against my buttocks teasingly. I gasped and arched against him as his hand dipped between my legs, stroking and circling and filling me with liquid heat. His mouth slid over my neck, sucking hard on my skin, nibbling at my earlobe. I vibrated in his arms, writhing against his heated, slick skin, desperate for more.

"He never touched you, did he…?" Ash murmured in my ear, voice deep and rough with lust. "Surely he tried…?"

I didn't have to answer. Ash could read my jumbled, drunken recollections of that night as I relived it briefly- no doubt his intention. He was all dominance and smug satisfaction as he lifted me against him, pressing me to the wall. Anticipation flared in my already enflamed loins.

"I'll erase every last trace of him on you, love," Ash promised, once again teasing my ass with his hard cock, and I was suddenly overcome with a strong curiosity about a style of sex I hadn't ever dreamed I'd want to try. I did want to try it. I wanted to try_ everything_ with him, wanted him to possess me in every possible way.

He picked up on that thought, too, and spun me quickly again so he could kiss me, plunging deep with his tongue. "Yes," he breathed. "Oh, yes. Soon. Everything. Anything you want." He lifted me again, and with a strong sure thrust he was inside me.

I had nothing to hold on to, nothing to brace on but his shoulders, my legs winding about his hips. It was such an exciting, freeing sensation, driving me wild with need. I had my demon back, and he would fight all comers to keep me. So strong, so hard, so primal, so _male_. He could protect me from anything, even myself. I screamed my pleasure, and he grunted with amusement, pressing me harder against the wall, thrusting harder, faster, _deeper_. Oh…such bliss. _ Yes, erase it all, all the pain and frustration and sorrow. Erase all the events of this day, of this horrible week. Fill me with you, and only you. _

He made another deep grumbly sound of pleasure, still maintaining his punishing thrusts. My orgasm erupted shortly after, fiery and wild, leaving me spent and shaking as he groaned and came hard inside me, pulsing and filling me with his hot seed. We stayed a moment in that position, panting and humming with pleasure in the hot rush of the water still spraying all over us. His lips caressed my neck, pressed softly into my hair, and his deep sigh moved all through me.

Once my reflex had relaxed enough for him to extract himself, he surprised me by slowly, gently washing my hair, then the rest of me, wordlessly following through with his promise to erase any trace I had of Al on my skin. Neither of us spoke. He kissed me again, gentle but hiding a ferocious strength, barely contained. I clung to him, and if any of the drops on my face were more than simply water, he didn't comment. For all I knew, the water swirling all about us hid more than one demon's tears.

"You have one hell of a hot water heater," I said, when my brain started functioning again. The water, at least half an hour later, was still scalding hot- hotter than I could have tolerated, before the curse that toughened up my skin and bones. I could play with flames if I wanted—good thing, too, now that I was back with Ash and all…

"Curse was expensive as hell and took me a week to configure properly, but it was worth it," he said as he turned off the water. "I like my little luxuries. Ready for the best part?" At his commend, the air around us shimmered it turned from steamy to blast furnace. I gasped at the sensation that should have left me red as a boiled lobster and covered in blisters. Loud, angry sizzling filled the heat-hazed air as every drop of water evaporated in a brief puff of steam. The sensation vanished before things got too uncomfortable, even for cursed skin, leaving my skin dry and pleasantly pink, with hair just damp enough to tousle artfully.

"OK…_that _was awesome," I admitted, grinning. My smile faded as I beheld the shreds of my more recent fashion nightmare, tossed to the corners of the room. _ Looks like I'll be raiding his wardrobe again, eh…? _"When this is all over, you're taking me shopping."

"As you wish," he said, winking.

Surely he hadn't seen "The Princess Bride." Or had he? My heart tried to melt a little, but my reason stomped on it before my idiot mouth could ask for confirmation of my wishful thinking. _Watch out, Evie. Just because he's done all this crazy shit for you doesn't mean that he loves you. He hasn't said it. He despises the thought. He said he'd never say it._

_He said he'd never _say_ it._

Peter Falk started narrating in my head: _That day, she was amazed to discover that when he said "As you wish," what he meant was, "I'm going to enslave the hell out of your mind and body with my crazy demon venom pheromones, then fuck you senseless_." I snorted with laughter. The Princess Bride could have been a much more awesome movie with a Dread Demon Roberts.

Ash was giving me a very odd look indeed, and I lost it. Once I started, I just couldn't stop. I pictured him as Westley, black mask and all, and doubled over, nearly busting a gut.

"This is not exactly a flattering line of thought, Evie," Ash said, sounding peeved, as I lost my balance and had to lean on him for support. But his lips were tight and twitching when I looked.

"So get out of my head, then!" I suggested, giggling. I tried to think of other romantic movies to embarrass him with, but, not being a huge fan of such, came up with only one other scene that might fit. However, Rhett carrying Scarlett up the stairs had the huge issue of Rhett's appearance and demeanor bearing such an uncanny resemblance to Al's. The fantasy faded away in a wash of cold, uneasy quease.

Ash_ tsk'd _beside me. "And here I just went to all that trouble to distract you, _Saenat."_

Ooh, I liked that nickname, especially now that Al had ruined Ash's previous endearment. The way he pronounced the ancient word held shades of _raptor_ as well as the _fire_—phoenix. She who rises from the ashes of her former life. Yes, I liked that very much.

I was still grinning the grin of the easily amused and recently thoroughly laid as he hopped us to his bedroom. I made for the wardrobe, where I selected another of Ash's long shirts and made due with another pair of his pants. He did have nice clothes, even if they were a little too big and way too long. He snickered when he saw me holding the garments I'd chosen against my body and looking forlorn, and I glared until he had to back up, hands in the air. "Aren't I supposed to be rich? Aren't you supposed to be able to alter your appearance?" I demanded.

"Yes, and yes…but even demons can't invent more time, love."

I sighed. No time to stir curses, no time for shopping…He was right, there just wasn't enough time in the world, and one had to prioritize. Which is why we spent the next half hour giving his bed another workout instead of dropping by the demon mall to update my wardrobe.

Lying here, sated and warm and happy, was such a beautiful contrast to the last week that I nearly wept again. Ash didn't move, and there was a very deliberate quality to his immobility, as if he never intended to let me leave his bed again. I confirmed it by wiggling experimentally, tempted to protest just to hear him growl something suitably alpha male and possessive. He pinned down my arms and adjusted himself so I could breathe more easily, but otherwise stayed put where he'd collapsed on top of me.

But the best time to attack is when your opponent is least prepared, and I couldn't help my thoughts returning to the previous theme. Who knew? He might slip up if he were sufficiently distracted. I waited until he was nearly dozing before asking, "Ash…let's say you _did_ put a curse on me to redirect the damage..."

His chest shook a moment with a sound that could have been amusement or, more likely, exasperation. "Evie. Let it go. It doesn't matter now."

"Wouldn't Newt have figured it out? Her curse goes off and your familiar mysteriously disappears at the same time? Or you mysteriously need resurrecting?"

"Hmm. Perhaps she would." Ash nuzzled my neck, grazing fangs against the tender skin until I shivered with anticipation.

"And… you don't think she'd be a little miffed that you'd found a way around her judgment?"

"Probably."

"Miffed enough to off you for real?"

"Quite possibly. You see why I couldn't have been so silly as to take such a risk. Your witch is such a hopeless romantic."

"You're so full of it, Ash."

"Well, of course you know best, love. You know how kind and gentle and unselfish I am. Completely unmotivated by baser instincts, like the desire to tie you to my bed and fuck you raw. That's me."

I smirked, even as I basked in the sudden shudder of warmth that pulsed through me. _God, again? Was I that insatiable? "_I don't know…it sounds like you do have a softer side in there. We should go on a date or something. Perhaps you could take me to the movies? When's the next demon Disney cartoon night? Perhaps we should host one."

He snorted. "I'm never going to live that down, am I?"

"Not in a thousand years." I didn't mean to broadcast the next thought, but he picked right up on it. _Are we all right now…?_

_There is still much to discuss, Evie, but…it'll be all right._

"There's more…? Shit, how much more can there be?"

Even my sudden suspicion didn't dampen his mood. "There's always more to the story, but the hardest decision has been made. Everything else can wait."

I wasn't naïve enough to think that Ash was done being an ass, or had miraculously stopped being a liar. After all, he'd ditched that truth amulet, hadn't he? I wanted to know every damned thing he hadn't told me, including why he had been so sick. And why hadn't he bitten me? His fangs were showing, what gave? "Ash… do you want to do the mate thing?"

He smiled, unselfconscious about the two sharp teeth he was displaying. "Of course I do." His eyes glazed over with lust—or perhaps it was hunger, who could tell?

"Why didn't you, you know, bite me then?"

"Is that an invitation, love?"

Oh my. That _look_ in his eyes. "Yes," I said. Coupled with the afterglow of amazing sex, I think I'd probably have agreed to just about anything he wanted at that moment.

He bent to kiss me, and my mouth tingled with the sweet taste of his essence. I couldn't call it venom, not anymore. "I want to. I want to taste you and own you and fill you with me until I well from your every pore." His voice was pure, raw, erotic silk, and he punctuated his words with kisses along my neck, beneath my ear. I moaned as every prior scratch and nip he'd seared into my skin weeks before began to tingle with sweet, sensual promise.

I gazed at him, startled, as he suddenly pulled back. "But I want you to, too" I said, fighting the flush of embarrassment that crept up my cheeks.

The grin that split his face was pure masculine satisfaction, but I saw the surprise that he hadn't masked quickly enough. He surged back to hard life in seconds, and bent to give me a kiss that was pure carnal heat. Without thinking I grazed my tongue against the tip of his sharpened fangs, hard enough to draw blood. With a groan, he deepened the kiss, and began to move inside me again, pulling away only after we were both slick and panting and he'd spent himself within me yet again. He still hadn't bitten me, though, simply indulged in that little taste.

"You make prudence difficult, Evie," he groaned, forehead pressed to my neck. "But I also want to do it right this time. I have more to discuss before I lay claim to you again."

I wasn't sure I liked the sound of that. But I could accept it. If he were actually going to be forthcoming for once, I wasn't going to stop him. We lay in companionable silence for awhile, my head on his shoulder where I could feel the still-rapid thump of his heart, his arms wrapped about me securely. I knew there was a world of angst awaiting me beyond these stone walls, but it could wait another few minutes.

Still…I couldn't help myself.

_Ash, please…I really need to know—_

_Evie, how comfortable are you with the idea of someone consciously choosing to die in your place? Not as a split-second, impulsive decision to jump in front of a bullet or knock you out of the path of a speeding train, mind you, but a premeditated, well-thought-out desire to end my own life rather than see yours snuffed out, without giving you a voice in the matter_?

He was right. I wasn't comfortable with the idea at all. In fact, it made me downright queasy. Exasperated. Angry. It was counter to something deep and dark inside me, striking me as foolish and stupid and wasteful. Were I fated to die, I would want the one I loved to live, to go on, perhaps to avenge me.

How the hell did he know me _that_ well?

_Isn't it far likelier that I'm a cruel, petty bastard who'd watch you die, or I'm a heartless, opportunistic murderer who would kill an innocent man in your stead? _

I wasn't certain, now. I mean, yes, it was far more likely. Not flattering, but…oh, hell. For a moment there, I'd really believed he might really have done it. Stupid as it was. Mad as I'd have been.

_I'm not sure which of those men you really want me to be. So stop asking, Saenat. Perhaps I was clever and found a fourth solution. Perhaps I was particularly vicious and would have aimed the curse at Al instead…or perhaps Newt. _

_But—_

_But it's still a moot point. Because you chose me. If you really must know, get stirring and someday you'll learn the answer. Or perhaps you'll discover who I am before then. In the meantime, let me be any of these men…or none of them. _

Perhaps he wasn't even certain which of those men he wanted to be, either, and was regretting whichever course of action he'd taken. Maybe he had disappointed, or even surprised, himself. But I decided to stop pressing him- perhaps one day I'd decide to discover what really happened. Or perhaps he'd tell me. Or perhaps it was better not to open that door at all, when to find the lady might be just as frightening as meeting the deadly tiger.

I did know one thing: Ash hadn't been going to stand by and do nothing. Those curses were for _something._ And according to what Adrian had directly witnessed, he'd saved me from certain death by Newt, at the risk of his own life. Whatever else he had or hadn't done, _that _man I could live with.

_Great. I'm stuck with Schrödinger's demon._

Ash laughed, a deep belly laugh that shook us both. _Yes. Yes you are._


	20. Flailing With Love

_Aaak, sorry for the long delay! Once again my job is taking a crazy amount of my free time. Also, this is the fifth draft of this chapter. I'm considering posting one of the others as a deleted scene, 'cause it's cool, but went way too dark and held up the story too much. Again, I am indebted to my wonderful beta reader deus3xmachina for her input and advice._

_I read A Perfect Blood and…wow. Except…I kinda felt Rachel's reunion with Al was a little anticlimactic, in that it was missing a lot of hot, wild, angry make-up demon sex. (And if that's a spoiler, then clearly you haven't been reading the same series I have.) But I still have my own version to write. *evil grin*_

_ETA: DANG! Is anyone else having such FFN issues? Took me ages just to load the chapter._

**In Which The Words Are Finally Said**

Having thoroughly exhausted me, Ash told me to rest while he wandered around in my subconscious, following the pathways the magic was taking through my psyche and cataloging the damage that had been done to my mind. I might have had some reservations about allowing him unfettered access before, but given the circumstances it seemed like a good idea. I was stuck with him now, after all, and it was kind of his job to keep me from blowing myself up. Sometime I'd have to ask if he was really serious about this being a permanent bond. Surely he was only being metaphorical and hadn't_ really_ tied himself to me permanently?

I snuggled into him and just let myself drift. It felt really good, what he was doing, as the warm glow of his power traced its way through the channels in my mind. Not even in a sexual way, but intimate and pleasurable nonetheless. I could feel his influence, like a large fish sending ripples across the surface of my thoughts as he slid carefully and silently though my mind, with nothing but the hint of a disturbance to suggest the shape beneath the waves. His own thoughts and feelings were just as unknowable. Sure, I had some trepidation about what he'd find in there, but every time the current of my thoughts turned to a direction I grew nervous about or ashamed of, he backed off and took a new direction. I got the distinct impression that, whatever other motives he had, he wasn't doing this to invade my privacy. Eventually I let go entirely and nodded off.

I woke up at Ash's mental nudge. _Our witch is getting antsy. It's nearly dusk in California. _What? How could I have fallen asleep at all, what with all the crap going on in reality that needed tending to? _You were emotionally exhausted. We both agreed you needed the rest. _

I took a moment to bask in the notion that there were two people who gave enough of a damn about me to care about my emotional health. I stretched, then spared a pang for the empty mattress beside me. He'd left when he was done? I guess demons didn't really need the sleep, and there was a lot of work to be done, wasn't there? Still…he'd always stayed with me before, wrapping me in his arms, murmuring how I'd never escape him whenever I twitched…

_Then_ rational thought kicked in and I wondered what they'd been up to, and why they hadn't wanted me around for it.

And…"our" witch? When had Adrian become "our" witch? Adrian was far too comfortable around Ash for my liking, though I couldn't have put my finger on why it bothered me. To clarify, I couldn't put my finger on why it bothered me beyond the _obvious_ bothers, like my unease at how easily Adrian had indentured himself to Ash in any way, and my dread of what the Coven would do to him once they found out. Just what had watching Ku'Sox devour his Coven peers done to him?

I slipped on my newly altered clothing- clothing which now sort of fit, thanks to a newly learned curse. It was a much simpler version of the real appearance-altering curse, which Ash promised to teach me as soon as we had a spare moment for cooking. This one simply shrank/enlarged and altered colors of existing clothing. I still looked a bit butch, but at least I didn't look like I'd been shopping in the dumpster behind a men's store any longer. Ash was more irritated by my look than I was, given how vital a put-together appearance was to the residents of the Ever After. For my part, I was just stupidly happy that the shirt still carried Ash's scent. I remembered reading somewhere that mingling scents was a big turn-on for vampires. It worked on demons, too.

It was certainly working on me right now, which was probably the only reason I didn't murder my demon on the spot when I dreamily drifted into our workshop and saw what he was doing.

At first I just stood there on the glyph gawking for the jaw-on-the-floor eternity it took my eyes to comprehend what I was seeing. Adrian. And Ash. Locked in a passionate full-body embrace, Adrian's hands clutching at Ash's body, his head flung back and eyes closed. Then Ash raised his head, and I saw the blood.

"Ash!" I shrieked, horrified. I rushed forward to break them up, then halted at the sudden tableau of guilty grimaces. Ash released Adrian and stepped away. Adrian recovered with a near-stumble, cleared his throat, rubbed at the wound and blurted, "It's not what it looks like!"

Was that hissing sound coming from my lips, or was the sizzle of my warm fuzzies evaporating only inside my head? "What the hell was that _supposed _to look like, then?" I asked.

Ash wiped blood from his lips with the back of his hand, going for smooth nonchalance, and nearly pulling it off, but for the wince in his eyes. "I was testing a theory," he said.

"What theory?" I shouted, face hot. Therese was already toying with the bracelets, despite knowing that they weren't coming off any time soon. Oddly, she seemed more subdued- I would have expected her to be raging out of control. Perhaps Ash had been tinkering with my head- or perhaps she only spun out of control when my own emotions were held too tightly in check, and my emotions had been spilling over the dam of my control for days, now. "The _let's see if Evie gets jealous _theory? Because congratulations, Ash, you're _right_! I'm jealous!" I'd never considered myself a possessive woman before, but Ash was _mine_—his magic, his blood, his venom, his body, his mind…

Wait, his _blood?_ Now _there _was a bizarre thought.

Adrian was wincing with his entire body as his face flushed redder than the deadly T4Angel tomatoes. My brief distraction allowed him an opening into the conversation. "No, honestly, he really was testing, uh, something."

"Oh, sure!" I growled, drowning him out. "That makes it all just _fine_, then! What's a familiar for, right?" I sounded like a shrew. I knew it. I couldn't stop it. "NOT happening in this household, Ash! Adrian is _my friend_, not your little guinea pig, whipping boy, or sex slave, got it?"

Both the men started protesting together, insisting I had everything all wrong. I glared at them, carefully examining them both. Forget magic and ley lines—at the first hint of a condescending male grin, I'd open the can of whoop-ass I'd been holding in ever since Al taught me how to punch. I was worse than pissed, I was totally humiliated. Ash had been so sweet and tender to me, then he'd left me asleep in his bed and put the moves on _Adrian_? It was so out of left field that my brain couldn't wrap itself around the notion. Jealousy was gnawing holes in both my stomach and my self-esteem, and I could almost see the little balloon of my ego deflating.

"All right, all right!" I threw up my hands in frustration. Amazingly, they shut up and gave me nearly identical belligerent, _I'm being misunderstood_ looks. "So, what theory? What were you testing?"

"Curse," Ash said. His new pose, an aggressive slouch, didn't hide his discomfort.

Adrian gave him Ash a glare, too. "I'm kind of interested in that one myself, after you said you just needed a blood sample. You cursed me, too?"

I snorted. _He got you with that line, too? How original. It's like he's recycling his entire seduction of me. Doesn't that make me feel special?_

Ash shifted under the combined pressure of our eyes, perhaps picking up on the bent of my thoughts. "_No._ It was on _me_. I'd just cast it on _myself_, OK?" He rubbed his neck, masculine pride making his movements jerky. "It was to see if I could turn it off, all right? The venom?" He turned his red-eyed stare onto Adrian, who looked nonplussed at this revelation. "You feeling any compulsion right now, mouse?"

"No," Adrian said, annoyed. "Not a damned thing." Ash looked pleased, until Adrian continued snippily, "and if you'd bothered to_ tell me_ about this little test beforehand, I could have spared us this whole little drama—I'm protected from compulsions, you bonehead. _Coven_, remember? You think vamps don't try to manipulate us? What good's a plumber who's bound to a vamp? I've got at least five different bites on me—six, now—and none of them do a damned thing. Including _yours_."

Ash deflated a little. "_Fuck_," he growled, running a hand through his hair again.

"And while you didn't violate the _exact_ terms of our agreement, you pull that shit on me again and I'll rip your balls off," Adrian added, still flushed red. His eyes shot to me, then back to Ash.

Ash shot Adrian a sly look. "Oh come on. You can't tell me you didn't enjoy that."

Adrian bristled. "Look, I may have a kink here and there, but it doesn't mean I'll fuck anything that moves." He folded his arms, glaring. "I'll be taking measures to deal with any more little…surprises from you."

Ash leered mockingly at him, but I was inwardly applauding the witch. I reminded myself that he didn't need protecting, and so far he'd been perfectly capable of handling himself around Ash. So far. I tried not to picture how his face had looked, or _where_ his hands had been gripping Ash, or how he _hadn't_ been pushing Ash away…

"Wait. Turn it off? The venom?" My stomach lurched as anger was forced aside to make way for dread. _You don't want to be mates. You spent all that time looking in my head. Now you don't want to be mates. You didn't want to bite me, and now you don't want the mate bond. Am I that fucked up? I am, aren't I?_ "I thought you wanted…you're having second thoughts, aren't you?"

"Evie," Ash said, shaking his head as if he couldn't believe how out of hand this was getting. "Look, it's not like that—"

"Then why'd you wake me up so I could walk in on you…?" I asked, feeling my heart shrivel up just that much more. Because he totally had, hadn't he? I'd taken my sweet time dragging my demon-smitten ass out of the bed and getting dressed- more than enough time for him to have bitten Adrian on the sly and hidden the evidence. Hell, if testing his venom theory was the reason, all he had to do was scratch the witch.

"Why didn't you trust me to have a _reason _for what I was doing?" he fired back, suddenly angry. "You just jump to—"

"Oh, I _did_ trust you," I growled. "I trusted you enough to tell you I—" Well, hell, I wasn't about to say I loved him _again_, not _now_. What if that was the entire reason for this fiasco? I'd admitted my feelings, he confirmed them while swimming in my subconscious, and now he was feeling…what, exactly? Scared? Contemptuous? He didn't return them, so he had to push me back? "Is that why? Is that why, Ash? Because of what I said?"

His mouth worked, but he didn't reply. I caught a flash of indecision in his goat-slitted eyes, anxiety mixed with anger as he debated his response.

"You weren't going to tell me about the venom thing, were you?" My voice was sounding odd, but perhaps that was because it had to force its way past the huge boulder in my aching throat. Well, shit. I was going to burst into tears now, wasn't I?

"I was going to tell you," he said, but I was shaking my head.

"Like this? _This _is how you tell me? Ash…" My voice broke, and I cleared my throat angrily. "You're my _yazataksh_. My anchor. I accept that there's decisions you have to make concerning my training and my magic and all, but this…this is a _relationship_ thing, Ash! Something we should decide together!" Ash's face went very grave, then blank. Shit, I recognized that expression. "…isn't it?" I asked, sudden uncertainty making me queasy.

Ash stared at me, lips tight. "You're blowing this out of proportion," he said, voice gravelly.

I felt the last of my ego hiss out with a little breathy sigh. I glanced at Adrian, who was the living personification of the word, "_Awkward_." I turned away from them, to hide the rest of my dignity behind the hand that brushed a nonexistent strand of hair behind my ear. I might have given Ash a mental harangue, but there was nothing left in my head other than a gaping hole where my self-confidence had been. I wouldn't win this fight, not now that Ash had slammed his shutters and hung up the closed sign.

"Tell you what…you guys, uh, call me when you've….yeah." Adrian sidled around me to the glyph on the floor and made his hasty, grateful escape.

I listened to the thump of my heart in my chest, aching with every thud. I felt my eyes burn, and blinked furiously. God, of all the times for Ash to turn around and smack me down, he had to do it right now? _Good time for it, I suppose. Now that I'm stuck with him and all. _God! I'd told him I _loved_ him. And he turns around and does _this_? My heart gave another little painful pang. What if I was right, and that was _why_ he'd done it. Because he wanted to let me know exactly where I stood with him, without words…? The worst part was how I'd fooled my own damned self into thinking that maybe he felt more than he did. _Master manipulator, remember_? He felt fondness and affection, sure…but one can feel fond and affectionate toward a puppy. Was that all I was, in the end?

But…he'd tied himself to me. In my subconscious. Bound us, for what he insisted was for the rest of our lives. No going back. It was going to be a long, grim eternity if he was already regretting what he'd done.

God, I was so confused. And hurt. And so didn't want to deal with relationship shit on top of everything else. If we even had a relationship. Did we? Or was he intending to bring us back to a mentor-student arrangement? Student with benefits? Absolutely not. I wanted more.

Didn't _he_?

Or was I totally misinterpreting this whole "mate" thing? After all, didn't Al say he had an arranged marriage? Maybe loving your partner was…unusual. Weird, by demon standards. Just great.

I forced my brain to start working again. I wanted to get out of here, out of this room, out of this life. I'd settle for getting the hell out of the Ever After, even for a night. Didn't I have something to do? Mysteries to solve and teenagers to save or something else other than this little high school drama?

"It's embarrassing, all right?" Ash volunteered suddenly, and I jumped, blinking. "Emasculating. I might as well hack off my nuts while I'm at it. Didn't want to say anything unless I knew it worked. Certainly didn't want to tell the witch."

I was still fighting the unreasonable urge to burst into tears as he confirmed my fears. He_ didn't_ want the mate bond.

"It's to protect you, Evie!" His voice was exasperated, full of aggrieved anger at my misunderstanding. "You have no idea what's at stake. I can't…we can't screw this up. We have to be smart about this."

He was probably right. I knew it, intellectually, but right now I wanted, yearned, burned for everything that was to be denied me in this life. Simplicity. Love. Normality. _Family._ For a blissful afternoon I'd let myself believe that I could have even the bizarre, imperfect demon substitute, this weird mate bond thing. Disappointment clawed at me when I forced myself to begin to accept that maybe even_ that_ was not an option any longer. I'd survive. I'd get some of the intimacy I craved from my familiar bond with Ash. But unless I stopped thinking of him as some kind of…boyfriend...

My breath hitched, but I grabbed hold of the second sob before it escaped. So things weren't going to work out for us. So the romance that I'd felt begin to blossom was all in my head. I'd scoffed at enough idiot couples in love over the years to know how foolish I was behaving. After all, Ash had warned me that he'd never say he loved me, hadn't he? It was my own idiot self, reading so much into his recent actions. _Grow up, Evie! Be an adult about this. Accept what he can give you, and stop mooning over what's never going to happen._

"I'm sorry I overreacted," I said, voice subdued. "We should probably get going."

"I'm trying to do right by you, woman," Ash growled sullenly. "If it isn't obvious, I still want your blood. That's the whole point."

_Blood._ "I know." I had no idea how deeply he was listening in on my thoughts, but he'd been sensitive about my privacy before, so I folded in on myself like a closing flower, wrapping the layers of my mind over myself to hide my heart away once more. _Thank you._

Ash's face lost a little of its austerity._ Evie—_

"I'm sorry I overreacted," I told him again. The mental image of Adrian's face, lost in bliss as Ash flooded him with venom and magic, burned briefly in my mind. To test his theory, all Ash had to do was swipe the guy with his claws. There was no reason to bite him, not unless there was another motive. And Ash practically gift-wrapping the scene for me to discover was still unexplained. I couldn't…I just couldn't come up with any other explanation other than _back off with the emotions._ "Let's just get going."

"Sure." Ash shifted again. "Remind me—where am I sending you, exactly?"

"I'm not entirely sure, actually. I'll have to ask Adrian." I blinked, and looked at him again in surprise. "You're not coming?"

"No, I have to talk to Newt." He took a step toward me. "About you," he added, as if I hadn't guessed that already.

"You think she'll know any more than you do…? Wasn't she the one who didn't think I could be saved?"

Ash looked away, then back, again looking at a loss for words. He approached me and stopped a short distance away, but that distance said more than just about everything else he'd said today with words. "She didn't think I could convince you to accept me. She's expecting an update."

"Of course." Even I could hear the disappointment in my voice. Did it have to be _now_? Sure, I was unable to muster the will to fight right now, but I might be up for it later on tonight, and now he wouldn't even be there to continue this discussion? Yelling across the two worlds into his head was no fun, especially since I didn't know if or when he'd be listening.

There was an awkward silence, probably the first of many. The list of things I wanted to say just kept growing, and my ability to articulate them had vanished entirely. I just gazed mutely at his chest, willing him to say them for me. Instead, he came out with, "Call your witch. Let's get this Hope fiasco over with so we can work on fixing your channeling."

_Hope fiasco_ indeed. I was beginning to wonder if I shouldn't banish the concept of "hope" entirely from my emotional repertoire. "He's your familiar, remember? _You_ call him."

Ash huffed again at the sullen irritation in my voice, before turning back to me abruptly. "And if you kiss him again, I'll kill him."

Fury rose in me. "Are you kidding? It doesn't work that way, Ash. As far as I'm concerned, if you get to sink your teeth or dip your wick into anyone you please, then so do I!"

Ash's eyebrows nearly took flight. "The hell? It was just a fucking _bite_!" he protested.

"Right after you _didn't_ bite _me_!"

"You're serious. You really are _jealous _about_ that_?" he pressed, incredulity in his voice. "It was nothing!"

We glared at each other for a heated few seconds. "Not nothing to me. What the hell were you doing to him?"

Ash rolled his eyes. "Deal was, I don't hurt him. No venom to dull the pain, so I used magic. What's the big deal?"

"His hand was on your _ass."_ Ash laughed, raising my hackles even more. "Ash, this isn't some…casual thing for me. It never has been."

He didn't answer immediately, but he had his blank face on again. "You think," he said after another awkward pause, "it's a casual thing for me?"

"No, of course not. I just don't know what it_ is_."

"I believe the word you're looking for is _monogamous_, yes?" he asked quietly, still feigning disinterested amusement. "And who are you to talk, love? Who was locking lips with the same witch earlier this very day?"

I reigned in my first defensive impulse. He had a point and I hadn't apologized for it. "That was…that was wrong, and I don't know why I did it other than I was pretty shocked and not really thinking straight."

Ash's expression didn't change, though he did lean a little closer to me. "Nobody's been thinking particularly clearly lately," he said. "Shall I make that my excuse as well? "

"I'm sorry."

He tilted his head, as if this were something that needed serious consideration before forgiveness would be tendered. "Are you…? Tell me, my Yvette, were you ever going to confess to that little indiscretion?"

I had to take a few breaths to calm myself, because this time defensiveness cracked reason over the head. But he had a right to be angry. Was that all this was about, vengeance for a simple kiss? "I would have, if I'd had half a chance. I was afraid you'd kill him."

Ash grunted, unmoved. "Fine. Are we done?"

"Do you trust me?" I asked, and saw his eyebrows pull together for a split second.

"No," he said quickly, smiling that dreadful smile he only used when he was trying to wound.

"You don't, do you? Even after you spent all that time in my head today. Even though you're in there right now!" Had he seen something terrible, or that did I have some dreadful feelings that even I wasn't aware of, some deep inner flaw of the soul that had repulsed him? He was right; I didn't trust him. I'd been living in anticipation of his ultimate rejection, every moment since that first delicious seduction and the terrifying aftermath. It was a fear that had plagued all my relationships, ever since I received the scar- and had lead to a lifetime of isolation. Surely he'd seen that? So why was he playing on it rather than reassuring me? "What do you see in there…?"

Ash flung his hands out and glared at the ceiling for a moment, his phony nonchalant attitude vanishing into pique. "Evie, it doesn't _work_ that way. It's not like every thought you've ever had is projected on a movie screen for my entertainment. So stop expecting me to know everything about you and what you're thinking and what you ate for dinner on your sixteenth birthday and what you named your first cat. It doesn't fucking _work _that way!"

"But I talk to you all the time—"

"Yes, I can hear you if you consciously project a thought to me down the familiar bond. But the rest of the time I shield myself from your thoughts and emotions, because it's pretty fucking distracting, all right?"

"Well, how was I supposed to know?" I demanded, again wishing I could reign in my defensiveness. Beneath it all I was annoyed at him—because he'd been far_ less_ nosy than I'd expected.

"Try _asking_, maybe?" He folded his arms and his eyes darted away from mine, already eager to go. "Are you done bitching at me?"

I felt an involuntary little whimper of frustration come from my throat, but I had to concede his point. "You honestly don't see my memories?"

"No. I told you before. I'm not fucking psychic. Unless you're thinking about something, I don't see it."

"But Rachel told me that Ku'Sox lived her entire life in—"

Ash looked heavenward again, clenching his fists. "He's fucking _better _at it than I am, OK? Any other ways we can point out what a useless fuck-up you're bonded to?"

I just stared at him, stunned. Was that was this was about? I reviewed the events of the week in my head, from the point of view of a jealous, possessive demon, and realized how completely impotent he must have felt—must still be feeling, given my new disability that he'd been unable to prevent, and the consequences, and me locking lips with another dude on top of it all. Jesus, it hadn't even occurred to me that this might not be about _me_.

Hell, I sucked at this empathy thing, didn't I?

That was probably my cue to say something supportive, but I'd just blown it. My befuddled expression only seemed to piss him off more. He turned away again, bellowing, "Adrian!"

_Evie, you idiot…say something!_ I berated myself. _ Fix this!_

"I love you," I said.

Ash froze in place, head still turned to the far wall.

I'd never said it to anyone before. Was it always this hard to formulate a coherent thought at such a time? "Yes, it's the kind of love you say you despise, but I feel it, it's real." Breath hitching, hands suddenly cold and trembling, I forced myself to continue before Adrian showed up. "I always just assumed you knew it already. So…just in case you didn't. I mean I said it before, sort of, but I need to say it for real, to your face. I love you."

He didn't move.

"Maybe I, uh, misinterpreted what this mate bond means, and all the, uh, "you're mine" stuff, and assumed too much about what kind of relationship you want with me. Just so you know, I, uh, don't want anyone else. Ever. And it's just you. I mean, not any old demon…_you_. I trust you with my life." I took another shaky breath, even though there didn't seem to be any room left in my lungs. Belatedly I forced my way past my fear and broke down the walls I'd just erected around my heart, giving him permission to stomp his way in if he wanted. "And, uh, heart. Too. From now on."

Not exactly Evie at her most eloquent, but at least I was sincere.

My statue of a demon was taut with tension, but he did at least turn his head a little my way—though not before Adrian chose that moment to answer the summons. Thank God, because I was about to die of tension myself. And frankly, I was terrified of his response, no matter what it was. If I'd just ruined my last bit of credibility in his eyes, I didn't want to know.

"Ready to go?" Adrian said brightly, as if the air weren't so thick with tension that knives wouldn't even cut it. "L.A., here we come?"

"Yeah, I guess so," I said, trembling something fierce. I wanted to throw up. This "love" thing? It wasn't very fun. I didn't feel much like a romance heroine. If I were in a bodice-ripper, it was totally the wrong kind—I felt more like that dude in the movie, right before the alien rips its way out of his chest. The feeling worsened when Ash swung to face us, his face one big stormcloud. If I didn't know him so well, I might have been terrified at the fangs and furrowed brows and steely glare. But I did know him well enough to guess it was turmoil, and not rage, that colored his features such a dark shade of thunder.

_You will summon me immediately if anything happens that you can't handle. And you will not hesitate to draw power from me, do you understand? As much as you need. The silver has to stay on you—don't let anyone take it off._

It wasn't exactly the response I was hoping for, but it did indicate concern. Then I remembered that, if I happened to die or something, Ash would not only be in deep shit with Newt, but might have to be resurrected himself. My rational mind reminded me that my safety was in his best interest, and indicated nothing more.

And at last, my heart finally took a stand and told my rational mind to shove it. _Enough already!_

I nodded, resisting the snappish reply of _Yes, Mother_ that popped into my head. Otherwise my brain was a complete blank. Whatever came next in this little script, I was blowing my lines in a big way. I was just happy to have survived the declaration.

Adrian was glancing between us with the mincing delicacy of someone testing thin ice. "I'll keep her safe," he volunteered. I huffed at the thought that I needed a babysitter, but on the other hand, my companion was the third most powerful witch in the world, now with New Improved Demon Backup. If anyone could keep me safe without Ash around, it was Adrian.

Ash gave Adrian a glance that was half acknowledgement and half threat of sudden creative violence, and then the world around us dissolved into the warmth of the lines.


	21. Detectives Detected

_Semester's almost over, yay! Drop me a note if you like my stuff…I could use any kind words after the horrible time we've had at my university. And thanks again, Deus3xmachina, for your advice…I hope you like the improved cliffhanger. ;)_

**In Which Evie and Adrian are Not Quite Holmes and Watson**

I still wasn't sure where we were going, but apparently Ash and Adrian had cleared up the details of the particular location in a silent conversation- a thought I still found a little unsettling. At least _someone_ was thinking along practical lines, because my brain was steaming mulch at the moment. In fact, I was still so busy reliving the moment of speaking those… terrifying… _words!_ that I didn't even notice where we were.

Adrian gave me a minute before waving a hand before my eyes. "Evie? You all right?"

I started, literally leaving the ground for a beat. The butterflies were dissolving into a herd of ferrets, making me eager to move, to jump, to scream. "Huh? Oh—fine."

He gave me a skeptical raised brow. "He looked pretty upset. Not my business—well, actually, I do have some interest in the matter beyond sordid curiosity—"

"I told him I loved him." The words rang in my ears, startling me again with their import. Words gushed out in a tumbled rush. "Seriously. Holy cow. I told him I love him. He hates the idea of mortal love, but I told him anyway. He didn't say anything, but he's thinking about it, and probably having a freak-out, but I told him. How did I ever work up the guts to actually _say _that? I've never said that, not to _anyone_!"

Now I knew why cartoon characters went bouncing and careening off walls following such a feat of courage. If I didn't get moving soon, I'd explode from sheer nervous energy. It was more heady and exhilarating than the first time I finished a good solid lecture before five hundred students, back when I had crippling stage fright. This had been orders of magnitude worse! Had I actually _said _that? What did he think? Did he feel the same way? If he did, would he ever tell me? If he didn't, would he ever forgive me?

Adrian gave me a penetrating look that was not without humor and a good deal of patience. "How old are you again?"

I glared at him. "Over fifty, and yes, it's my first time."

He laughed, his expressive face full of sympathy and amusement. "Oh, honey, are you in for a ride. I sort of envy you—I was fourteen when it hit me, so you can guess the kind of idiot I made of myself."

I snorted, his gentle teasing making something tight and scared inside me loosen its death grip ever so slightly. He was right—I'd probably make a dreadful mess of things before this was over. But it was the totally normal kind of trouble that anyone—and everyone—got into. For a moment everything was golden in my mind. We were both reasonable people…mostly…and we'd work things out. For once I wasn't in over my head. Right?

Then I saw the building before us. OK, scratch that last bit.

"The Sairobi Biochemistry Research Institute?" I read on the large sign just off the walkway that led to the disaster. I took a moment to look around at the vaguely familiar arrangement of buildings around me, like a lovely, landscaped office park. The night was warm, just a little humid, and a light, fragrant breeze stirred the palms and rustled the trees. I felt right at home, actually, among all the glittering, tanned young people dotted around or rushing from building to building, backpacks slung over a shoulder. They paid us no heed—indeed, we weren't the only ones who had paused to gaze at the destruction, still encircled by its yellow warning tape and glowing markers lighting the larger bits of rubble. Apart from the ambiance of ultramodernity and serious cash, it could have been my old university in Florida. "This is UCLA," I said.

"Yeah. Hope went to school here. She was studying organic chemistry—at least, that's what she was _supposedly _studying with Dr. Finn. Given the real focus of his research, though…" He trailed off, looking thoughtfully at the destruction.

I followed his gaze. The Institute was a long, gangly structure that took up most of a block, reaching six stories high. Whatever Hope had done had only hit the right side. It was as if a two-story sinkhole had opened about two-thirds of the way down the length of the structure, deep under the foundations, and that section of the building had just dropped down into it. The upper floors had survived intact in many places, though some sections had given away completely under the strain, leaving gaping holes in the walls and roof. On the far right, serious girders and beams had kept the wall mostly intact, bent and oddly sheared off. The left half was nearly completely undamaged, but for shattered windows here and there. Overall, it looked like a giant had come along and stomped on it, driving one section into the ground. It wasn't nearly as bad as I'd pictured in my head, and I said so.

"Designed to withstand quakes," he said. "Thank God, because otherwise it would have probably collapsed entirely. This building's only ten years old. Elves sunk a ton of money into it. Was supposed to be just about everything-proof."

"But not demon-proof," I said, keeping my voice down.

"Apparently not. Near as we can figure, she removed a section of reality in a sphere of approximately seventy feet in diameter."

I gaped at him. "She _what?"_

"It's gone. Poofed. Vanished. Along with everything and everyone inside it."

I shook my head, recalling the feeling of pulling the lines into myself, ready to unleash all the unholy fury of an untrained demoness scorned. Was that what would have happened, if Ash hadn't stopped me? No wonder the local inhabitants had started jumping ship, then sent the local housing association after me. "So they never actually recovered the bodies?"

"No. We have no idea what happened- probably they were drawn into the lines and disintegrated. I mean, they're not in the Ever After, and how likely is it that Hope sent them into some kind of pocket alternate universe? I don't think even _trained_ demons can do that. She tore one hell of a messed-up new ley line into reality, though. That's why all the gawkers," he added, pointing at the folks who were now edging away from us. Having opened their second sight to see the new line, they'd probably caught a glimpse of our delightfully demonic auras. Or perhaps they'd caught the delightful scent of Eau d'Ever-After wafting off our skin and clothing. I flashed them a wicked grin, giving in to temptation, and their wariness turned into downright alarm.

_Oh, hell. _"Adrian, aren't I still wanted for this, uh, crime?" I asked, watching as one of the rapidly retreating witches pulled out a cell phone.

"Oh. Right. Not a problem, just give me a second to find something appropriate…" He pulled out what looked like a keychain, full of wooden charms. Snapping one of the wooden rings off of the chain, he handed it to me. I didn't hesitate, slipping it over my pinkie finger and feeling the charm settle over me like a warm blanket. "There," he said, pleased.

I couldn't see my face, but I was shorter, wider, and definitely more buxom that I'd been before. And I was wearing a rather loud flowered dress. "Uh, great," I said, lifting a hand to feel the hair-sprayed nest of curls on my head. All I needed was a crocodile handbag, and I'd be all set. "Very flattering," I added, and Adrian grinned.

"I like that one. You're my dear old great aunt Bella. Lives in Vegas. Used to be a showgirl. Now she collects cats. Don't play poker with her, she'll clean you out."

I snorted with amusement as looked down and found an illusory cat-hair on my sleeve. "I like her already."

He donned a disguise charm of his own, becoming a skinny beanpole of an elderly witch, with a shock of white hair that badly needed trimming. "Uncle Fred," he said, grinning toothlessly as I burst into laughter. I hoped the charm would last until Ash could see me, so I could freak him out.

_Ash._

"Evie?"

Oh, swell, the butterflies were back. What was he going to say? Would he say anything? Would he just give me the cold shoulder for the next hundred years or so?

"Uh, Evie…?" Adrian waved a hand before my face.

"Huh?" I blinked, pulling myself out of my distracted daze. Adrian tried not to roll his eyes, but I could see the effort it cost him.

"Lab? Hope? Preventing a war? Focus?"

I snorted with laughter again at the toothless octogenarian telling me to get a grip. "Aw, give it a rest, ya barmy old coot," I said, getting into the role as I elbowed him playfully in the gut. Giddiness was still wreaking havoc with my ability to stay serious for long. I forced myself to look back at the science lab, which was a very sobering sight indeed. Forty people, eleven of them elves, had perished, with a hundred others injured. This wasn't about clearing my name, it was about finding out why this had happened, why Hope had gone postal. "She must have been really upset already. Rachel told me what it felt like, when she was triggered. It was weird, but not violent, not really."

"Triggered?" Adrian looked at me sharply. "What do you mean, triggered?"

I stared at him, feeling a blush creeping over my borrowed wrinkled cheeks. "You know. Ash did the binding thing that night. We were, uh, playing in the lines. Rachel got a good wallop of it. I imagine Newt and Hope did, too. It's a dose of good old-fashioned demon horniness. But if Hope were already upset about something else…" I stared at the building thoughtfully. "You say there's cameras that saw her going in? Hey, were there cameras in the lab? Did they catch what happened?"

"There were, but the cameras in the lab fed into a separate closed circuit, into a computer that vanished along with everything else. Security cameras on campus and on the main floor caught her, though. And yeah, she was already upset. She argued with the guards because she didn't have her student ID card on her, and ended up throwing a tantrum and bursting into tears. The guard on duty survived, by the way, if you want to talk to him. He didn't let her in—Finn himself came up to get her. The guard mentioned that Finn was in a pretty pissy mood, too. Threatened him with dismissal and all that, when the guard was only doing his job."

I tried to put it together in my head. "She kept saying that she had to tell him something. It was so important that it was the only thing she remembered when she came to, after Newt put her back together. She kept saying it over and over: she had something vitally important to tell Finn. If he were upset, though…maybe he already knew. So she's upset, he's upset, and maybe they're arguing alone when the magic hits her, and she—"

"…is suddenly overcome with the urge to jump him?" Adrian suggested.

"Maybe?" I shook my head. "But no, I don't think an elf would have fit the bill. Rachel said the desire was extremely, uh, specific. It's partly pheromones, or whatever else demon males do." I tried to keep my voice steady, so as not to give away Rachel's secret, because I was really walking the edge, here. And Adrian was about the cleverest witch I'd ever met. "It would have been awfully confusing for her, though, to be suddenly overcome with a wave of lust out of nowhere."

His wrinkled face looked thoughtful as he considered it. "Maybe she was already about to snap, and it just sent her over the edge. You've never experienced this...trigger?"

"No. The only other females capable of sending it out are Rachel, Hope, and Newt." I blushed. "And as far as I know, none of them has been getting busy with anyone lately," I lied.

"Uh huh." Adrian's lips were curved into a secret smile. Damn! He suspected, didn't he? The witch was entirely too smart for his own good. "So the question is, what did Hope have to tell him? She found out something big."

"Maybe we should be asking what it was that Dr. Finn was angry about, instead?" I suggested. "Unless he was just angry because Hope wasn't supposed to learn about…whatever she learned about. But that's too easy. Say he gets an email, or a call, or some kind of message…is there any way we can check his phone records or hack into his email?"

Adrian chuckled at my fervor—or perhaps it was amusement at the totally obvious things Detective Evie was coming up with. "Already did—at least, the emails we know about. The FIB already looked into the 'official' lab business and found nothing. The elves gave us access into the _unofficial _business emails that they wouldn't let the FIB touch, and again, nothing. Well, nothing that jumped out at us from the subject headings of over_ ten thousand _emails that hadn't already been deleted, rather. Someday they'll have to invent a charm that can pick out important bits you can't find with a regular search, and dig out the deleted ones, because heaven knows we don't have any decent _hackers_ lining up to join the Coven."

"Get a pixy," I suggested. Hell, it might not be a bad idea to get Jenks in on this…but then, he was on the road trip with the rest of the baby-napping gang. Unless Adrian already knew of any other tech-savvy pixies, we were out of luck. I scowled in thought. "And phone records?"

"He got some calls from various family members, but none of the family we talked to reported anything out of the usual. And_ I_ didn't interview them, so I have no idea if they were telling the truth or not."

I folded my arms. "This detective shit is hard," I complained. "So what do we have and what have we ruled out, exactly?"

"Not a damned thing. Let me think, what else did we check out…?" Adrian tapped his whiskery chin thoughtfully. Grandpa guise or not, I'd know that bouncing leg anywhere. "I got us a copy of the visitor records and checked them against known students and employees, just in case Finn's bad mood was from an unwanted guest. I have a list of a few dozen names that aren't affiliated with the University- though that includes couriers, vendors, and postal workers. I should mention there's also a loading dock that gets a zillion deliveries a day for all the labs, and they don't keep track of names, so…"

"You said the FIB was looking into it—what do they think happened?"

"As far as they know, you came back from the grave and blew up the building. It's obvious that demon magic was involved, and it's obvious that this was an elven facility- they put two and two together, and came up with a recently acquired familiar acting on demonic orders to stir up the war. Even though Hope came through the front door, they have some stills from some grainy black and white cameras inside showing another woman with dark hair wandering around campus that nobody's been able to identify. It's not Hope- she's wearing different clothes."

I grumbled something foul, trying not to be upset about the mistaken identity and motive. Of course they would. Hell, it made sense, in a simple-minded way. And how could they possibly guess the real truth? And even if the FIB learned the real truth, how would I ever clear my name without putting the witches in danger? "And we have no idea who this woman is? Nobody checked her out?"

"Well…no. Because Oliver told them it was you."

I'd only met Sir Oliver once, but man, I was starting to hate the guy. He'd been an irritating little prick to me after I'd let two witches get shredded by an angry demon, but I'd managed to talk my way out of a shunning. But back then, he hadn't known_ I_ was a demon, had he? If I forced myself past my wounded pride I could see his point of view- perhaps protecting the witches from the genocide that would probably follow if humanity learned of our demon origins just_ might_ trump finding out what the hell had really happened here. Even if it meant that the elves thought the demons were renewing hostilities?

No, actually, that part alone renewed my irritation at the arrogant little Coven windbag. Did he _really_ think that letting the elves kill off the demons would help witches in the long run?

My foot began to tap as I glanced around the brightly-lit campus. It was a little after midnight, and the campus was buzzing with life. Jeez, I didn't even know what day of the week it was anymore. It wasn't anywhere near hopping enough for a weekend, but there were still plenty of students everywhere, going about their merry way. Had they ever guessed they had a demon in their midst? "So the official line is that I'm a demon familiar and they sent me to scout out an elven location to firebomb or something? Do you get the sense that Oliver actually believes the shit he's spouting?"

"I...I'm not actually sure _what_ he believes, to be honest. After Rachel managed to blackmail him to get out of her shunning the first time, he's been kind of…"

"Batshit crazy?" I suggested.

"A little paranoid about witch security," he admitted, in a voice that suggested he was being very diplomatic about completely agreeing with me. "Particularly about _demons among us_ and all that. I think Ku'Sox might have sent him over the edge. People are starting to suspect that Rachel's not what she seems. Nobody knows about her Rosewood yet, but it might get out if a particularly enterprising reporter gets hold of it."

I made a frustrated, grumpy noise. "I guess I can see his point, but _still_. Is he aiming the FIB and the IS at me because he thinks Hope is dead? Or does he know about Hope being a demon?"

"Again, I have no idea what he believes now. But yeah, he's totally using this as an opportunity to call you out and get you arrested…or worse."

Even my newfound tummy-flutters of love couldn't keep out the encroaching depression at that thought. I could hide in the Ever After…but that was probably Oliver's secondary goal, if I couldn't be neutralized or imprisoned in reality. Damn it.

"So there's a mystery woman wandering the campus the day of the attack that everyone thinks is me…is she connected to this business or not?"

Adrian shrugged. "Could be. Nobody's looked into her. Maybe we should?"

I threw up my hands in frustration. "I don't know! I mean, yeah, I guess so, if she's the only lead we have. Did she go anywhere near the lab?"

Adrian thought for a moment. "I think so. She went to a lot of the buildings."

"So she should be on the visitor's register at the lab that day?"

"Not if she didn't go inside the actual building," Adrian said. "But tell you what- we'll do a search of the names, and see if any of the names on the visitor register turn up a picture or any other interesting tidbits. Maybe we'll find an arrest record or something."

I nodded. "OK, that's a start." I wracked my brains for anything else. "Hey- did you check out Hope's dorm room? Maybe hack into her own email?"

"She lived in an apartment off campus, with two other witches. Neither of them heard anything unusual. She went to her classes as usual, was scheduled to work in the lab that afternoon. And yes, the FIB hacked into her email, too. Nothing. Her cell phone records had nothing after about 3pm the previous day, either due to being switched off or having no signal. Probably she left it in the lab, because they didn't get a signal down in the basement. Otherwise she'd probably have called Finn, don't you think? There's plenty of other calls to him over the past few weeks."

I was running out of ideas. "Weren't we going to try to look up her biological parents? Did you ever look into that angle?"

Adrian smiled. "Right! I forgot about that. Let me call up Viv. She was looking into it." He brought out his phone and had a brief conversation with Vivian, while I stared at the ruined building and tried to think of anything else we could investigate. Who else might Hope have turned to, having received awful news of some kind?

"She's got some names for us," Adrian said, the snap of his sleek little phone waking me from another reverie.

"And Hope's adoptive parents," I said. "Can we talk to them?"

Adrian sucked in a breath. "Didn't you know? They were in the lab too. Her parents, Ellasbeth's parents, Finn and his wife, and various members of their immediate families. It was only good luck that Ellasbeth had a prenatal checkup scheduled and happened to be somewhere else at the time, or she'd be a statistic, too."

Poor Hope. I hope she never, ever found out that she'd accidentally killed her own parents. I felt tears welling in my eyes at the thought of the guilt the poor girl must bear already. "So maybe she wasn't just talking to Finn down there, when she got triggered. She was talking to everyone. The secret must have gotten out somehow. Knowing you were raised to be a demon sacrifice would send anyone over the edge."

"Well…maybe…" Adrian didn't sound convinced. He glanced down as his phone beeped, and his fingers tapped in an expert dance that I, technological Luddite that I was, would never hope to match. Adapting to email when it had first appeared had taken me years. I'd only gotten a cel phone a few years back, when I started my summoning business, so clients could reach me. _Email _by _cel_ _phone_ was just… _unnatural._ "Aah. We have names. Not that many, happily. And a note that says these are all the witches in the entire United States that have lost three or more children to Rosewood in the past...forty years. Well done, Viv!"

His voice held more than a little admiration, and I glanced at the toothless old codger curiously. "Do you have a crush on her, too?"

My voice was teasing, but Adrian's lips quirked with the hint of a smile. "Well, sure. I have a weak spot for strong, dangerous women. And Viv's pretty awesome."

I found that I was pleasantly complimented, with a teensy hint of rivalry thrown in. "Then Rachel's probably on your crush list, too, eh?"

"Oh my God, she totally kicked my ass, the one time we went and locked her up." His voice trailed into dreamy recollection. "Five full Coven members, six-sided glyph, strongest circle we could cast, and she friggin' _owned_ it. Then she nailed me in the gut and I nearly cracked open my skull." He rubbed the back of his head in remembered pain, and added, "Don't remember much after that…"

I laughed, though inwardly I was astounded. Holy cow_, seriously_? Rachel took a circle powered by _five Coven members_? I was beginning to think that Rachel had me soundly beaten in the power department, and she wasn't even trained as a ley line witch. _Yikes. _"I see you've forgiven her…?"

Adrian shrugged. "She banished Ku'Sox. We couldn't. That, and she pisses off Oliver something fierce. Oliver's entertaining when he's all riled. He's such an idiot- anyone with half a brain can see Rachel's not a danger to anyone except herself." He scrolled through the names on the list Vivian had sent him. "Well…there's a few names listed as living in California, one in Utah, one in Colorado, and a couple more in Washington, but that's it for the West Coast. Should we get on the Net and start looking them up?"

"Who's the woman in Colorado?" I asked.

"Sophia Latourette. Ever heard of her?"

"She might be a relative," I said. "My birth mother's family had that name. And Mom had the Rosewood allele, obviously. But I don't really know much of my own genealogy." I tried to dismiss the potential connection, but it kept nagging at me- after all, Hope did bear a small resemblance to me. Surely it meant nothing- dark brown hair and light skin weren't exactly uncommon features among witches.

"The Washington names?" I asked, recalling that the Withons were based in Seattle, and had taken care of the baby-snatching. Which begged the question, what were _they_ doing in LA the night of the disaster?

Adrian rattled them off, and I committed them to memory: Delores Mallorie, Emily Kruft, Ruhina Mehta. But they didn't ring any bells. Not having any other good leads to work with, we meandered our way across the campus toward the library, arm in arm, playing the role of an old married couple enjoying the beautifully scented evening air. I closed my eyes for a moment, savoring the scents of salt and greenery in the air. I wondered how they taught earth magic, this close to the ocean—the salt water in the air would negate most earth charms. Perhaps they had the super-duper filters I'd heard about, or some other way to purify the air. Or maybe thee R&D labs here were coming up with salt-proof earth magic, wouldn't that be neat?

I suddenly longed to go and find out. I didn't know anyone at UCLA, but academics were academics. Give us free food or a drink, and you can't shut us up. With all the demon magic I knew now, I could give them food for thought for years and years. I suddenly itched to do it, to go seek out my peers, engage in some serious pedantry over wings and beer as we bitched about students and grant reviewers. I was so lost in happy thoughts as we climbed the few steps into the library that I'd hardly noticed the grand building rising up around us—until we passed the notice board, and I saw my name and picture on half a dozen posters, under a big fat "WANTED FOR QUESTIONING" in bright red letters.

I stared at the posters for a long time, resisting when Adrian tried to pull me away. They'd included my original face, along with a snapshot from my recent hospital visit as my "recent alias." My scarred face and grim expression from my old faculty profile picture wasn't doing me any favors now. I looked solemn and haunted in the younger picture, ill from the blood loss and the drugs.

In neither picture did I look like a very happy person.

"Kinda makes you wish we still had witch-burnings, doesn't it?" asked a slender blonde with a huge ponytail, as she paused to glare at the posters with us. "My cousin totally took a class from her, back when she taught. He said they fired her when she gave a student to a demon. Why the hell didn't the Coven take her out back then?"

I swallowed and made a small, wounded sound which could mean anything, but which the girl took for assent.

"Fucking security measures are a pain in the ass. I had to stand in line for almost twenty minutes to get into class yesterday!" She sniffed. "Stupid. She'd have been back by now if she was going to finish the job. I just want everything to go back to normal."

I couldn't look at her, or I might burst into tears. I wondered what it would be like to be a young, innocent student whose worst problem was the inconvenience of being kept waiting for a class. Adrian's hand found my arm, which grounded me among the turbulence of my emotions and the shaking of my knees. "They're pretty sure it's her, huh?" Adrian asked in a creaky voice.

"Duh, she was all over campus that day looking for some girl- one of the ones who died? Everyone knows she did it." Impatience made her voice sharp. "No offense, but where have _you_ been? It's, like, national news."

This time I nearly lost my balance, and Adrian steadied me. "We don't follow the news," Adrian said in his best harmless, crotchety old man voice. "Gives us heartburn. Have a nice day, now." He tipped an imaginary hat to her, and she gave him a bewildered, pitying look before flouncing off into the night. "You all right?" he asked gently, tightening his grip on my arm.

"No," I croaked, eyes returning to the wanted posters. National news. Maybe_ international _news. Maybe the _entire world_ thought I was guilty of this crime. Was it possible that I'd _ever_ clear my name? Would people even believe it was a mistake? Would the elves? My eyes began to swim as I felt the beginnings of a panic attack clutch at my heart, and I held onto Adrian's arm for a long while, trying to recover from the clutching void that was dragging me under.

_Shunned. This_ was what being shunned meant.

"Hey…it's all right, we'll figure it all out." Adrian was coaxing me away from the message board, as if I really were the old woman that I appeared. And I felt like an old woman—getting my legs to work took nearly all my concentration. "Come on, we'll go ahead and look up these names. Come on, Ev—uh, Bella."

But we hadn't been paying attention to everything the blonde gal had said. If we had, we wouldn't have walked right into the new security-charm gauntlet at the new security station, just beyond the inner doors of the library. They triggered the moment my aura hit them, and landed us in a big fat bubble, while alarms blared, lights flashed, and Adrian's fake disguise charms gave up the ghost with faint little pops.


	22. Moon Called

**In Which Evie Consults the Moon**

Both of us just stood there dumbly, registering that yes, we were in trouble.

"Take down the circle and we'll run for it," Adrian suggested. I just gave him a bewildered "buh?" look and he elbowed me hard in the side. "If Rachel can take a Coven circle, you can take this one! Do it quick!"

Breathing fast, I examined the circle. It was amulet-based. The large wooden charm hung around the neck of a security guard with the gun pointed at us and barking at us to stay put. If I broke it, I'd probably fry her _chi _pretty badly, but it would mean that she wouldn't be thinking "shoot them" for at least a minute or two. And a fried _chi _would heal.

But…I'd be attacking her. To escape arrest.

There was a big part of me that was resisting the idea, purely due to years and years of following the rules. I mean, yeah, I summoned demons- but I survived because that process has _rules_. Maybe a lot of social loners out there think that rules no longer apply to them, but I kept my head down and followed the rules and mostly, _mostly_, stayed out of trouble. And there was a security guard with a gun pointed at me, and a wanted poster with my name and face on it, and suddenly I realized that if I just blindly went with the rules on this one and allowed the IS or the FIB to cart me off, I'd probably end up dead, just like Oliver wanted.

"Oh, hell," I said, realizing I was about to add one more black mark on my soul that would be deserved, this time. But there was Adrian to think of—once Oliver found out he'd gone over to the demon side, Adrian might be in danger, too. But there was no more time to think- I could see other security guards pelting up the stairs behind us, having to shove past students. We had seconds. I met the eyes of the woman with the gun, thinking that she looked little older than a student herself. "Sorry," I said, with a heartfelt grimace.

Then I closed my eyes, braced myself, and shoved my hands into the circle, blowing it apart with a massive surge of power I'd drawn from Ash. It really was that easy.

The woman dropped her gun as the power filtered through the amulet into her _chi_, and she shrieked before the amulet exploded, cutting off the influx of force. Adrian was already dragging at my arm as she went down, and Ash was shoving at my mind asking what the hell was going on, and I could see the blood—

"No!" I cried, realizing the shrapnel had pierced her skin in several places including her neck, and the unconscious woman was in danger of bleeding out.

_What the hell is going on?_

"Evie, come on—" Adrian followed my gaze and froze. "Oh, shit."

_Ash. Tell me how to transfer a stored curse!_ I barked at my demon in my head. _Now!_

I felt the knowledge enter my mind, and used it to trigger my last stored healing curse as I knelt quickly and touched her arm. A sheen of green-tinted ever-after coated the downed guard, and I sucked back the smut from the curse before it could stick to her. The stench of burnt amber blistered the air. Everyone skipped a few steps back in alarm, fingers pinching noses and eyes going wide. Several of the students in the doorway tried to stampede out of the building. It hindered the reinforcements for another few precious seconds, and I ran through the curses I knew, drawing on another Ash had used during his brief fight for his life. "Close your eyes," I warned Adrian, and triggered it, just as the guard groaned and began trying to sit up. Curses and screams and shouts of discomfort filled the library as the light suddenly became unbearably bright. As everyone covered their eyes, momentarily blinded, Adrian and I dashed down the stairwell on the right into the deeps of the library to hide.

_Evie?_

_Escaping. Talk later!_

_I'm pulling you back._

_Not yet!_ I insisted as I concentrated on not flinging myself headfirst down the stairs. Down? Didn't "down" mean "basement?" As in, no way out? _I'll let you know if things get bad. Stop pestering me!_

He snapped his end of the connection in an amused huff, and Adrian and I legged it down a hall and into a room stacked high with books. We plowed past three startled kids and a cart of books, upsetting all of them. I had no compunctions about using my handy-dandy ley-line-based stunner spell on them. I only used enough power to numb their legs, and couldn't help my grin as their nasty curses followed us. At least they wouldn't follow.

"Where are we going?" Adrian asked.

"You ask that like I have any idea what I'm doing." Shaking from adrenaline and the sick feeling that healing the injured woman wouldn't help my case, since I'd attacked her in the first place- even if it was by accident- I stopped by a wall to glance at the little building diagram next to the "In Case of Fire" cabinet on the wall, beneath the "In Case of Misfire" salt-water showerhead. I was digging myself in deeper and deeper. "If we're lucky, there's a fire escape door in the back," I said, then located it on the diagram. _Thank you, Gods of Fire Safety_. "If we're _really_ lucky, they aren't covering it yet. Got any more of those appearance disguises?"

Adrian grinned at me as he broke two more rings off the keychain. "How'd you know it would be downstairs?"

"You didn't notice your thighs burning from all those hills we climbed?" I said. It hadn't been a conscious thought, that the land sloped down behind the building. Thank goodness Therese was paranoid and paying attention!

We had to pass a few offices to get out, so we first ducked into the men's room. I paused at the door out of pure habit, then had to laugh at myself as Adrian gave me an exasperated look and yanked me inside. We slipped on the rings, and promptly transformed into nondescript middle-aged male witches in nondescript middle-aged clothes. Not quite a blending-in charm for UCLA, but at least we didn't look like ourselves. A few heads were peeking out of doors curiously as we completed our journey down the hallway, but they didn't pay us any special notice once we sauntered past.

The fire alarm was already blaring, so our barging through the fire door didn't set off any more bells and whistles. Finding ourselves in an empty concrete loading dock, we hightailed it out of there. Once past the parking lot, we kept our pace brisk, trying not to look guilty, but nobody paid us any heed.

"Holy shit," I said, coming to a stop a few blocks away. I was seriously shaking now. "Adrian, I…" I wasn't sure what I wanted to say, but I felt like I was about to burst into tears.

"Hey, bro…it's all good," Adrian said, reminding me that we were in disguise. He gave me a punch on the shoulder. "Coffee?"

Laughter bubbled out of me instead. "You buying? I'm broke."

"I thought you owned Ash and all his stuff?"

"I do. Think I could swap him for a latte?"

"Ah. Right."

We changed disguises a few more times, just in case, but it looked like we'd made a clean getaway for the moment. By that point I'd lost track of what we'd even been going to do in the library, until Adrian reminded me about the things we were going to look up. A bigger monitor would have been nice, but for now we settled for just using his phone to surf the net. We hid ourselves in a booth in the back of a little coffeeshop that was trying way too hard to be quirky, with garish, slightly obscene art by local artists gracing the walls. Now, at least, we were a little closer to fitting in, looking like college students in shabby t-shirts and jeans. Adrian tapped away at the little bitty keyboard like it was an extension of his fingers.

I sipped my peppermint mocha, savoring it as if it were pure manna. It was not warming my soul nearly as effectively as advertised on the sign out front, and I glared at my mug balefully.

"It's personal now," I said softly, and Adrian paused. "Oliver's made it personal. To do this to me, when I haven't even done anything, is just…cruel."

Adrian looked pained. "Evie…I don't know what to tell you. As a Coven member, well…our number one priority is to keep witchkind safe. Viv and I, well, after Ku'Sox and Rachel, we think that it's time to add black magic to the arsenal, but Oliver…he's traditional. And the Coven's done some pretty awful things for what we consider the greater good."

I wanted to weep and wail. I wanted to blast Oliver to smithereens. I almost wanted to blast the rest of that lab building, because I was pissed and hurt and what the hell, everyone already thought I did it, so why not give them what they wanted? Perhaps this was what being a demon felt like. Perhaps this was _exactly _what being a demon felt like, and after thousands of years of being feared and despised, one eventually just gave in and became the monster that the rest of the world saw in you.

"Hey!" Adrian sat up suddenly, holding his dinky little phone to my face. "Look at this! Last seen- it's the day before the disaster. And look at her picture."

I blinked and tried to focus on the itty-bitty screen. "Local woman missing," I read. "Delores Mallorie." Well, it was a brown-haired woman, but it was hard to tell anything else without a bigger picture. "But she lives in Seattle- isn't it unlikely that she ended up all the way down here?"

Adrian gave me an impatient look. "Evie. Doesn't she look like Hope? I've only seen Hope's picture, but I see a resemblance."

I peered again at the woman in the image, after Adrian enlarged it a little. Well…? "Could be. Hope's birth mother, maybe?"

"It would explain why she was wandering all over campus, if she was looking for her daughter. Hang on a moment…" His fingers flew as he tapped his phone. "No way," he said, triumph on his face. "She_ was_ here that day. She tried to get into the lab. Look, she's on the visitor list!"

"Seriously?" I peered at the little screen, and sure enough, he was right. It couldn't be that easy. "Well, it would also explain why Hope and Aiden Finn were so upset, if she showed up asking questions. Can we confirm that it really was her wandering the campus?"

Adrian's fingers flew again, coming up with a still from a black and white camera. There was nowhere near enough detail to be certain, at least not at this resolution. "Without actually going around asking people…?" Adrian thought for a moment. "There's the guard on duty, he might remember her, and Hope's roommates talked to her. But we can't go to her apartment—I'm sure Oliver's having it watched, too."

I took another sip of my mocha, and glared at it again for daring to get cold. "We could ask Ash to zap us right inside or something."

Adrian snickered as he finished off his drink. "Or we could, you know, just _call_ them up."

"Jerk," I growled at his smug look, but I couldn't stifle a grin. I'd been living with demons too long. Adrian rolled his eyes, but he was grinning too as he punched in a number. I warmed my drink with a sliver of ley line energy and sipped it again as Adrian introduced himself using his official Coven voice and title. A moment later he jumped, then held the phone away from his ear in confusion. Setting the phone gingerly against his ear, he tried to interrupt the tirade, but I could hear the closing curse and click from where I sat.

"She chewed me a new one and hung up on me," he said, still staring at his phone in bemused bewilderment. "Seems she's tried calling us and was given the brush-off. She's pissed as all hell!"

Intrigued, I reached for the phone. "Can I try?"

The woman who answered had a strong accent I couldn't place, and it made her cursing difficult to understand until my ear adjusted to it. "Uh, hello?" I broke in, and she went silent for a moment.

"Who is this?" she asked suspiciously. "You with that Coven? 'Cause you can just kiss my-"

"No," I said, then thought, _what the hell…?_ _ Try being honest._ "I'm Evie. Evie Sinclaire? The woman the Coven is framing for the bombing? Will you talk to me for a minute?"

"No shit?" I had to hold the phone away from my ear for a second, wincing. Girl had a_ voice_ on her—I was surprised the entire restaurant wasn't looking our way. "No fuckin' way! What the hell you want to talk to me for, eh?"

"Uh…just…you talked to a woman. The day of the bombing. The woman they say is me? I was wondering—"

"Those Coven fuckers, they don't listen! I tell them! I tell them they got her wrong. It's not this Sinclaire woman. That girl on the posters too young and skinny, I tell them. Don't look nothing like her! They say, she done wearing some disguise charm, yeah? Don't tell _me_ I let some stranger in my house wearing no disguise charm, damn it—how stupid you think I am, anyway? This is L.A., y'know? I_ check_ first, all right. I _major _in glamour charms. Idiot Coven!"

I felt a manic grin curve my lips. I liked this woman already—I think she was more pissed at Oliver than I was. "I might know who she is but I'd need you to confirm it."

"Yeah? How so?"

"Are you near a computer? Look up a woman named Delores Mallorie from Seattle. There's one link in particular that has her picture." I spelled it out for her, then listened to a few seconds of simultaneous tapping and angry muttering. I had to suppress my giggle of amusement, wishing we could stop by Hope's place to meet this woman, whoever she was.

"Buggerall, it's her!" was the verdict. "That's her, that's the bitch come round asking 'bout my little Hope! She—" The voice trailed off for a few beats. "She _missing_? Why she missing? She blow up that lab, she go missing? Heh. Serve her right if she was in it, all right!"

"Thank you," I said sincerely. "I don't know why she's missing, but…I don't think she did it. I think she just had lousy timing."

"How you figure?"

"Did Hope ever tell you she was adopted?"

"The fuck? Maybe that why she fights with her folks all the fuckin' time? They say to her, she should stay home for private schooling. Man! But she pay her own way, get scholarship, landed a work-study in a big-name research lab and everything. Bastards. She been gone for more than week and nobody come by or even call to pay their respects, or get her stuff. I keep it all as she left it, don' let nobody take nothing, even those Coven thugs—"

"Wait—the Coven was trying to take Hope's stuff?"

"I tell them, I tell them you fuckers come back with a court order, yeah? I ain't lettin' nobody take her stuff but her own parents. Why the fuck they never come by?"

"I…I don't know."

"And why you figure it wasn't this chick done bombed the place?" The voice was suspicious. "Maybe it _was_ you who done it?"

"No! Honestly, it wasn't me. I…I'm pretty sure I know who it was, though, but nobody's going to believe me. Mostly I need to find this woman you spoke to. Can you tell me about her?"

"She ask a lot of questions about my Hope and her folks, but I tell her she gotta talk to Hope herself. I only know little bit, yeah? Hope, she don't talk much about her family. Don't look much like them neither- they all tall and blond, and she so short and all brown hair, y'know? You say she _is_ adopted?"

"Yeah. Tell me…do you think this woman might have been related to her?"

The voice on the other end of the phone was a little more subdued. "Coulda been. Look, this lady, she seem real nice, yeah? Nice and real shy. Not like some mad bomber. But God…I told her…I told her where Hope work, sent her right to her, then the building blow up with my Hope inside—" Her voice ended in a choking sob.

"Hey…hey, uh…who am I speaking with?"

"L-Luna," she managed.

_Luna Pearson_, Adrian supplied silently, pointing to the name on a sheet of notes. _Or her sister Sola._ He grinned, but I'd seen my share of students with unique names over the years and didn't bat an eye.

"Luna, it wasn't your fault. Honest." I felt totally hamstrung, speaking to a disembodied, distraught voice. I was never particularly good at being comforting even in person. I just waited, awkwardly, until the sobs started sounding a little more coherent.

"Why you want to know about this woman?" Luna finally asked. "And you know why Hope's family ain't even stopped by or even called me? I know this ain't about_ us_, Hope said she ain't told her family about us. How would they even suspect, yeah?"

Oh, God. Hope had a _girlfriend_? She'd never mentioned it…and now I was feeling horrible for not even considering the effect that Hope's disappearance (or rather, death) would've had on her friends and, apparently, lovers. Hope hadn't said anything about any of them, not even Luna. Did she even remember them? "Luna, I really don't know much about her family life. I wish I did. I'm trying to find out more, actually. I just want to find out what happened, and I need to find this woman. Do you know anything—"

"Who _are_ you, anyway?" Suspicion was back in Luna's voice. "Hope, she never mention no Evie Sinclaire either. How you know her?"

"I…I met her the day she died." For all I know, Miss Luna Pearson who majored in glamour charms also had a truth amulet handy. "It's, ah…it's real complicated. I know Hope would want you to help me." _If Hope remembers you, anyway_, I added silently. "How long have you two been together…?"

"We been friends for a coupla years, now. She was…well, y'know. Curious. Not out. Not to her family, I mean. I kinda got the feeling they're pretty traditional."

_Traditional_. Heh. You didn't get more traditional than _elves,_ did you…? Though maybe not quite in the same way she meant. "Luna, I'm so sorry for your loss," I said, meaning it. "I know what it's like to have someone you love die."

There was an awkward pause. "Ah, we only were really _dating_ like for a little bit, but…y'know, thanks. We was real good friends for long time, though. Yeah. Thanks." Another awkward pause. "She was something special, all right. Dunno if she were the One, y'know, but she was real special."

_You got that right, Luna._ "Is there anything else you can tell me about Delores, Luna?"

"She told me she got herself a room at some witchy hotel, down Santa Monica way, if she didn't find Hope and Hope come home. Don't remember no room number or nothing. Had "Broomstick" in the name, though. Could be she's holed up there, yeah? Oh—and I just now remember, the lady, she said she was following a tracking spell. Followed it all the way from Seattle. I tell you what, that's one _powerful _muthafuckin' spell right there."

I motioned to Adrian for a pen, writing this down. "Thanks, Luna. I can't tell you how incredibly helpful you've been."

"You find those bastards did the bombing, all right? You find them, and you shove it down the throat of that Coven. They never listen when I try to talk, but they still calling me, you know? One of them just call me, right before you do. I tell him them wankers can just go to hell and stick it to a demon."

I'd just taken a sip of coffee, and now sporfled it all over Adrian's phone. I gave him an apologetic look as he flicked a napkin at my face in irritation. "Yeah, they're a bunch of talentless hacks, I agree," I replied, and Adrian made a mock shocked face at me. "Can I call you again if I think of anything else, or discover something important?"

"OK, yeah. You sound all right. Where the hell you from, anyway? You sure got some funny accent."

I blinked. She thought _my_ accent was funny? "Well…Colorado. But I spent a lot of time in the South. So…where are you from?"

She laughed. "New York. Good talkin' to you." She hung up on me. I just stared at the phone, bewildered, because whatever the hell her accent was, it didn't sound like _New York_. Maybe she was second generation…something. I shrugged. It wasn't important, and was actually rather charming. Perhaps it was something she pulled on, like her glamour charms.

Adrian took his phone back and gave it another disgruntled wipe-down, just in case. "I take it you found out something useful?" he asked.

"Delores Mallorie _is_ the woman who was wandering campus that day," I said. "She found her way here using a tracking spell. There's only one earth charm I knew that's strong enough to home in on someone at that distance, and—"

"And it only works between direct blood relatives," Adrian finished for me. "Holy shit, Evie. I think we just found Hope's birth mother."


	23. Unmasked

**In Which Ash Doesn't Get His Latte**

"Well, we haven't found her _yet_," I replied. "Are you certain she wasn't in the building?"

"Well… OK, so here's the thing. There's a ton of evidence that she was wandering all over campus. But she never actually got _into_ the science building since it's ID only. So Oliver says she—or rather, you—were casing the place, looking for the elves, and then had your demon zap you directly inside so the cameras wouldn't detect you."

"But it wasn't _me_!" I realized I'd whined that last bit rather loudly, and stared into my paper coffee cup with a flushed face until people stopped looking at me.

"Obviously. And this woman, whoever she is, isn't a demon, right? So she can't just zap herself anywhere. So there's no evidence she was ever _in_ the lab."

"OK, so… why's she missing then?"

"Good question. We should check out this hotel Luna mentioned." Adrian did a quick search for "Broomstick" and "Santa Monica" and came up with an inn called "Bedknobs and Broomsticks." He snorted and rolled his eyes, and I agreed- pretty trite. He jotted down the number, then called it. But a brief conversation with the concierge indicated that Delores Mallorie had shown up, paid for a single night, then left—though she'd left a change of clothing and some toiletries behind, and attempts to reach her since had been unsuccessful.

"Shit," I said, when Adrian glumly reported this. "Why would she leave? Did she hear about the bombing and get frightened?"

"If I were a mother looking for a lost child, and I'd just found her, then learned that she'd died in a bombing… there's no way I'd leave the scene," Adrian said. "I'm not sure what I _would_ do, but I wouldn't _leave_."

"Not to mention, someone _stole her kid_. I'd be raising hell with the Coven, the IS, the FIB, the news, and anyone else who'd listen. So, again that leaves us with the question, if she wasn't in the lab…why's she missing?"

He shrugged, thinking hard. "She didn't call the Coven, or I'd have heard about it."

I gave him my best skeptical eyebrow. "Even now?"

Adrian snorted. "OK, yeah, things have been a little bit crazy since a demon ate half our members. I might have missed the memo." He was trying to be flippant about it, but I could hear the effort it cost him. "And maybe she did complain to the FIB and the IS, and they didn't care."

"Or maybe she was waiting until she had proof? And now her proof has been blown up, so she's… what would she do next?"

"Maybe she's in hiding? Maybe she's worried they'll think she did it? They are displaying pictures of someone who looks an awful lot like her, saying this lookalike was snooping all over campus that day, after all."

I scowled. "I want to give her the benefit of the doubt. She came all this way to find her daughter. The idea that she'd just give up, go home, and let someone else take the blame pisses me off." I sighed, running a hand through my hair, startled to feel the crinklier texture of the tight curls, thanks to Adrian's excellent amulet. "We need to find her. If she's hiding, we should try tracking her. All we'd need is a bit of her hair or blood."

"But they've already destroyed her stuff by now, if they're a decent inn," Adrian said. Witches were extra paranoid now that humans knew about magic, particularly focusing objects. Destroying any traces of all guests after they'd left, including unclaimed belongings, was standard hotel policy. They weren't half-assed bout it either, employing hospital-grade autoclaves and industrial-strength incinerators, marinating their bedding in ley lines to remove the residual aura signatures, that sort of thing. We wouldn't find any traces of Delores there.

"Go all the way to Seattle, find her address and break into her house to get a hair, then come all the way back here to track her?" I could already hear Ash muttering about not being a shuttle service, and grinned.

Adrian considered for a moment. "Or… we recreate the charm Delores used. We use _Hope's_ hair to find her mother."

"Oh." I grimaced. "Assuming we're right, about their relationship, that should work…but that would mean having a nice little chat with Newt. She's not high on my list of people I want to see today, considering she wanted me put down like a dog not twenty-four hours ago." I was still pretty sore about that, dammit. I was doing just _fine_, now that I had my new familiar. Which reminded me, I should probably let Ash know we were doing OK, and not languishing in Alcatraz or something.

Adrian smiled. "Or we could drop by Luna's place. We'll find plenty of personal stuff there."

But I was already scowling at my cup. "No… you said Oliver's probably got it bugged. Besides, Newt and I had a bargain that assumed Rachel was dead, and now we know she's alive, so… I need to talk to her anyway. Kill two birds with one stone and all that."

Adrian winced. "And those two birds might be… us? What's the bargain?"

I drained the rest of my latte, barely tasting it. "Rachel has a mark on Hope. When she dies, it's supposed to transfer to Al, due to their official student-teacher relationship. Newt wanted me to buy the mark from Al. In return she'd protect the souls of my four friends from Ash. But Ash isn't trying to get them, and Al never owned the mark because Rachel was never dead to begin with, so I'm not sure if the bargain still stands, or isn't enforceable now, or what. I do know that I _don't _want to be surprised. Not by Newt!"

Adrian nodded. "Good point…"

"Ash was supposed to be filling her in on my not-dead-yet status. Maybe he can sweet-talk her before we get there. But first—anything else we need to do here?"

Adrian was consulting his notes. "Not that I disbelieve Luna, but we don't actually _know_ that Hope spoke to Delores Mallorie that day. Luna just sent her to the lab. But give me a minute and I can possibly confirm it." His fingers danced over the keys again, and while he carried on with his conversation, I closed my eyes and contacted Ash.

_You in trouble? Again?_

_Ash, my life has been nothing but trouble since I met you at sixteen._

Ash sent me a mental preen. _Consider yourself well-avenged, then, love. What do you want?_

I felt my brow furrow at the abrupt question. Did I have to _want _something just to talk to him? _Are you done chatting with Newt? _

_Yup. Why?_

I felt a touch of irk rise in me, and suppressed it. He was going to pretend it had never happened, wasn't he? Of course he was. Ass. _We think we found Hope's witch mother. We want to track her but we'll need a hair from Hope. Oliver's probably got the campus rigged with alarms keyed to my aura, and that probably includes Hope's apartment. _

_That's no problem. We can hide your aura easily enough._

_We… can…?_

_Sure. We'll just layer another soul over it. I've got a couple downstairs, should be intact enough. Want me to—_

_No! Eeew! Ash, I'm not wearing someone else's soul! That's the creepiest thing I've ever heard!_

He paused, bewildered and bemused by my reaction, then sent me the mental equivalent of a shrug._ Suit yourself. Just trying to help. At least let me make you both tough to track. It's a two-second curse. Prevents tracking by non-black magic measures. Unless the Coven still has your blood?_

_They shouldn't. I think Adrian was the only one who ever had it._

_All right then. Give me a second… _ In a weird, wet, green slither, a new curse wiggled itself between my ears, insinuating itself over my aura. I shuddered involuntarily. _There. You may still set off alarms, but they won't be able to track you by your aura. Not unless the witch Coven has changed its stance on black magic._

Beside me, Adrian squeaked, shuddered and looked around in confusion. "Huh? Sorry, someone just walked over my grave," he explained to whoever he was talking to.

_Thanks, Ash. _

_Oh, it wasn't free, love. You owe me something when you get back. _

I shuddered again, but it wasn't from aversion this time. My body tingled all over, little threads of pleasure zinging from my fingertips and toes, shooting up my limbs to gather in my mark, where it exploded into a mini-sunburst of orgasmic bliss. I refrained from letting the entire cafe know about it only with difficulty, confining it to a little swallowed gasp.

Adrian gave me a concerned look. I grabbed a napkin and faked a sneeze, face flushing red. Well, OK, at least my confession hadn't dampened Ash's enthusiasm on _that_ front. Breathing hard, I forced my thoughts back to the important stuff, which first involved convincing myself that jumping to Ash's side for a quickie was NOT as important as solving the Delores mystery. It was a toss up there, for a moment…

_Newt. I still have to talk to Newt,_ I insisted as Ash nibbled my ethereal earlobe, and slid sensual lips down my soul's neck._ There's that bargain I made with Newt about Hope's mark._

Newt's name worked like magic- or a cold shower, anyway. Ash backed off his metaphysical seduction with a silent groan._ Ah. Of course. You realize she's probably forgotten it entirely._

_Not going to take that chance, not when there's four of my friends' souls involved. And how would the court see it if a deal becomes unenforceable due to a false assumption when it was made?_

_Hmm… depends on whether she wants to be nasty to you or not. But honestly, I think she's too distracted right now—and anyway, she does have a vested interest in keeping you on her good side, at least until Zee's claim on her ward is resolved._

I cocked my head, considering. _But Zee took his mark off, didn't he?_

_No. Only modified it to the unconfirmed form—basically the form that says he still claims her, despite her not accepting the debt. She can't get it off until Zee gets his say in court._

_Newt must be pissed._

_Zee's certainly nowhere to be found, that's for sure. Not after Newt nuked his garden._

I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach_. She… nuked his garden? What about_…? Oh, God. All those poor little elven souls!

Ash's mental voice made a weird little pause-skip-suppress pattern that I didn't know what to make of. _You're really worried about those stupid globes, aren't you? _

_Yeah, I'm sentimental that way._ _What with having a goddamned heart and all._ My mood darkened further as I felt the need to justify myself, and stomped on it.

Ash's thoughts gave another little stutter before he consciously cleared the mental aside away, refocusing on the matter at hand. Again, I couldn't interpret what he was feeling, other than a vague sense of his being sort of intrigued. _I don't think she'll let you leave with a focusing object from Hope, but bring the stuff you need to make the charm and she might let you build it here, under her supervision. Best case scenario. She's become worryingly protective of the girl. She might not even want Hope to know what you've discovered._

Build a locator charm in Newt's kitchen, with her hanging over our heads like a volatile vulture? This was just getting better and better. But where else could Adrian and I cook up a spell, outside of Ash's own kitchen? Certainly not in any of the labs on campus. _All right. I'll give you a call when we're ready._

_I live only __to serve you, _Berexadtha.

He was totally being sarcastic, now. The word had been an endearment only because he'd made it one, but now it was back to simply being a word a slave called a master, when said slave was in full brown-nosing flattery mode. I scowled at him mentally, not loving the reminder that I still technically owned him and all his belongings, and he still wouldn't let me disown him to ease my conscience. It meant nothing to our relationship. And it meant everything. It also skeeved me out to no end. _Knock it off, Ash._

_And you owe me for all these trips,_ he added. _Just reminding you._

Since when was he keeping score again? I thought privately, before catching the playful edge in his thoughts._ I'll bring you a latte, familiar, _I replied mock grudgingly. _Take it or leave it._

_Extra shot. Lots of froth. And cinnamon. _His amusement took on a wicked edge as he directed his attention elsewhere. It wasn't really breaking the connection- the connection was always there now, in the background. Rather, talking to him now was like tuning in to a particular conversation in a crowded room, one that took work to hear and maintain through all the noise. Perhaps one day we might be attuned enough to each other that we'd maintain a constant awareness, but I didn't really want to cultivate_ that_ level of closeness. There's times you really don't need or want to know what your partner is really thinking.

Especially when you've just bared your heart to your partner, and had yet to receive an acknowledgement of any kind, good or bad. If I knew my demon, he'd enjoy tormenting me by withholding his response for some time, until I writhed with need and anticipation. I could hardly take everything back and pretend I didn't care, now that I'd said it, so that's exactly what I would do. Writhe.

Ass!

The click of Adrian shutting his phone drew my attention back to the witch. A big grin was splitting his borrowed face, which still somehow retained his youthful, endearing gawkiness while simultaneously looking nothing like him at all. "The security guard remembers Delores. He said she came in and tried to get into the building, but had no ID. She signed in and they called down for Hope, but Hope wasn't there yet, so Delores said she'd wait. It's right there on the visitor sheet," he said, pointing to the photocopied page on his phone after enlarging the relevant bit: Delores Mallorie, there to see Hope Hazelton. Maybe she'd gotten Hope's full name from Luna, or maybe she'd learned it before tracking the girl to UCLA. In any case, it was a big stupid glaring clue that someone should have noticed, but nobody did because nobody else knew that Hope had caused all the destruction. Or that Delores Mallorie, not me, was the woman wandering around that day. Thanks to Oliver, the creep. I really wanted to find some smug IS agent or two, and rub their nose in our elite investigative skills, but that would mean telling them all about Hope and the elves.

"Then what? Did he recall anything else?"

"Well, she waited, and Hope came in and Delores intercepted her. They had a friendly conversation and left together. Hope came back awhile later, distraught, and that's when she and the security guard got into a fight over her ID and the guard called Finn to come up for her."

"They left…? Did he overhear where they went, maybe?"

Adrian shrugged. "Said Delores suggested they go get a… coffee."

We both had the exact same thought as we glanced at each other, then around at the coffee shop we now sat in. Naaaaah. That would be way too easy. Except that it _was_ pretty closed to the damaged science building…

"Can't hurt to ask," I said, and Adrian once again called up the image of Delores Mallorie on his phone as we got up to interrogate the baristas.

It turned out that Hope and Delores hadn't been in_ this_ particular shop, but we were informed that there were three other cafes within walking distance of the science center. At a Starbucks not a block away, one of the baristas remembered the women—mostly because Hope had made a loud scene and dashed out, and Delores had sat there sadly for nearly forty-five minutes afterward, sipping her iced tea with tears on her cheeks, heedless of the evening rush and the growing need for free tables. She'd only left after being gently, then not-so-gently encouraged to leave once the tracks of her tears had dried on her cheeks—whereupon she'd pulled herself together, picked up her phone, and began a very angry conversation on her way out.

"Can you believe our luck?" Adrian asked, bouncing along like a puppy as we left the building with another latte I'd picked up for Ash, nice and big and frothy with plenty of cinnamon.

"No," I replied, hand on the door. "I have the worst luck in the world. Any minute now the shit will hit the fan."

And it did, the minute we cleared the door of the Starbucks. I'd like to think that we'd have gotten away with it, if it hadn't been for those stupid kids right behind us, blocking our retreat. But the unexpected and unheralded hail of paintball pellets that pelted us from three sides got them, too. I didn't have time for a single thought beyond how annoyed I was that I'd just splashed Ash's cinnamon latte all down my front, before the sleepy-time potions took effect and dropped us where we stood.


	24. Vigilante Injustice

**In Which Evie Invokes the Curse of the Red Tape**

Waking up from a sleep charm is unlike waking up from actual sleep. For one thing, your mind doesn't go into a different mode, then awaken befuddled and confused. Instead, you pretty much continue the thought you were just having prior to being charmed, incongruous as it is, while the world suddenly changes position, location, and situation instantly around you. For another, you've usually covered in really, really cold saltwater… which has usually been sitting around in someone's dissolution vat way too long, getting stale and growing green shit. So I went right from _Damnit latte all over WTF paintballs argh kids_ to _GAH cold latte all over WTF paintballs UUUUGH smelly saltwater gross ow my hand what's this I don't even_—

Sputtering and spitting out the nasty salt taste of my charm-breaking bath, I found I could only wipe my face with one hand. The other was handcuffed to the chair I was sitting on, pulling at my wrist painfully when I yanked at it. I shivered in the air-conditioned room, because nobody ever bothers to _warm up _the saltwater. (They never do, do they?) Instinctively I tried to tap a line, but the silver on my wrists prevented that. My own silver, a zip strip, and the new witch-proof cuffs too, apparently. Shaking the sticky hair out of my eyes, I glared around balefully, though the effect was ruined by a sneeze.

Four people watched me, but otherwise I was alone. No Adrian. But I'd never be truly alone again, would I? To reassure myself, I sent a tendril of thought out to Ash, and received a poke of acknowledgement back.

_Are you ready to be picked up? _

I paused at the urgency behind his thought — there was something he wasn't telling me — though I got the feeling it didn't pertain directly to me._ No, give me a few minutes. I need to find out what the hell is going on. Have you heard from Adrian?_

_No, why?_

Ash might go nuts ifhe found out Adrian had failed to keep me safe. And I didn't want Ash zapping himself over and tearing these people apart… yet… so I sent him a mental shrug. _He ran off to do something and hasn't come back yet. No biggie. Talk to you soon. _ I tuned him out before he got suspicious, and focused on my captors.

Three men and a woman watched me suspiciously. The woman had Ellasbeth's baby-fine wispy ice-blonde hair and slender build. She wasn't nearly as well-dressed, though — she wore blue jeans and a peasant blouse, and looked like she'd just come from class. She had her hair in an elaborate twist that had probably taken someone quite a long time to get that "just tossed together" look perfectly right. Her handbag was trendy and so were her shoes, and on closer reflection those jeans were probably from some high-priced couture shop, given how artfully they were tailored, and just as artfully dyed and bedazzled. She had diamond studs in her ears, and her face was perfectly made up. She looked like she'd walked off a movie lot, playing the part of a college trust fund brat. Hell, maybe she had — we were right next door to Hollywood, after all.

The much older men flanking her looked similar enough to be closely related, wearing the same hawk nose and hair cropped very short. One had a scar on his forehead, like he'd scraped off a half-dollar-sized chunk of skin at some point. The other was unscarred by anything other than T4 pockmarks, a souvenir of the Turn. Their hair was mousy brown, but it was the scars that told me they weren't of Trent and Ellasbeth's purebred elven lines. I immediately pegged them as the Rich Girl and the Muscle, squinting at their auras for confirmation. Purple arrogance riddled hers, and those of the men were yellow-green with swirls of red, a color I rarely saw outside of IS agents. The honorable ones, oddly, which made me upgrade my opinion of the two thugs. Bodyguards, maybe?

The final dude was most likely human, with Asian features and a professional, blank expression. He was dressed in a professional shirt and slacks, not a uniform, but he radiated calm authority in a manner that made me peg him as FIB — but not perhaps in his official capacity here. His body language suggested tension and discomfort. Clearly, he wasn't calling the shots. He smelled human, whereas the others smelled of cinnamon, wine, and forest, the scents I'd come to associate with elves.

The relaxed, cavalier attitude of the elf and her guards convinced me that they had no idea that I was not contained, that Ash could have me out of here in a blink with less effort than scratching his nose.

I forced myself to add some anxiety to my defiant expression, as it never hurt to be underestimated. "You going to explain what this is about, or just stand there and gawk at the witch? And where's Adrian?" I asked. "Did Ellasbeth put you up to this?" I added, focusing on the young woman. I thought I remembered Ellasbeth telling me she was an only child, so it wasn't her little sister… but she was close enough otherwise, in attitude.

"I'll be asking the questions, you murdering… _bitch_!" she snapped. Even spittin' mad, it looked like the word hurt coming out. The FIB guy shifted a little, posture stiff. No, he wasn't happy at all about this interrogation, but he didn't look ready to step in and interfere, either.

I gave my best professorial withering glare, and was surprised to see her wither a little, under her anger. She was lacking in style and authority, even with two thugs behind her and me handcuffed to a chair. I'd had it with being accused of this bombing, and I wasn't going to be sweet about it. "Sure thing. I'm totally happy to cooperate, given how polite you've been so far."

"Where are my parents?"

"What?" OK, that threw me. "Who're your parents?"

"I'm Jessalyn. Jessalyn_ Finn_?" My brain wasn't making connections fast enough for her, and she huffed. "My father ran the lab that _you_ bombed. Where is he? Why haven't we been able to find anyone who was there?" She leaned in, hate sparking in her eyes along with tears. "_You didn't even leave us the bodies_! Where are they? In the Ever After?"

I forgot I was supposed to be pretending nonchalance; Jessalyn had just blown several circuits in my head. First, wasn't there a big conspiracy to frame me? Weren't all the elves in on it? Maybe they weren't! These elves really thought I'd done it? Ellasbeth hadn't told them otherwise? Didn't they have any idea what was going on?

I must have been making a dumbfounded face for too long, because Jessalyn nodded to one of the bodyguards, who raised a hand that was dripping with a black spell. Oh, crap, I'd seen this one before. Ku'Sox had used it to disintegrate a door, and the clothing on my back. Apart from really not wanting to go through that again, I couldn't use the countercharm without giving myself away, and I'd just given away my last healing curse.

The FIB man stood up, bristling. "Hold it, Kallasea. She's still got rights. What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Wait!" I added, as the elf lowered his hand a little. "Just… give me a second. I'm a little baffled here. You guys don't know what's going on?"

I'd directed my question to Jessalyn rather than the FIB guy. Now it was Jessalyn's turn to look bewildered, but that expression rapidly melted back into anger. "Don't deny your involvement, you… you… demon familiar whore!" Honest-to-God, she actually winced as she said the words. Bullying really wasn't her style, but she was bound and determined to be a badass if it killed her. I tried not to let my brief amusement show. "The FIB, the IS, and the Coven are investigating this, and everything points right to you."

FIB guy shifted again, but didn't say anything. I got the impression that he was being coerced into allowing this interrogation, and that he retained some skepticism about the evidence he'd seen so far. I also got the impression that a confession here wouldn't be admissible, but it would certainly be damning enough for anyone who already wanted me dead.

"_And_ we rescued the Coven witch you caught for your demon masters — as if destroying our research wasn't damning evidence enough to send you to a nice long seaside vacation on Alcatraz!" She was openly crying now. "Why? How could you kill innocent people? What could the demons possibly have given you that was worth _seventy lives_?"

"What? Nothing! Nobody gave me anything!" Well, that came out wrong… Bloody hell in a handbasket. I wanted so badly to palm my forehead. I really hated my life, right about now. "Look, guys… do you have a truth amulet? I'll swear on it that I didn't blow up the lab. I'm trying to find out what exactly happened and why. Talk to Adrian. He's NOT a familiar, by the way. He is an_ apprentice_. By choice." _Not the smartest choice, I'll be the first to admit, but I'm sure he thought it was a good idea at the time…_

"How can you deny it?" Jessalyn shouted, color rising in her white cheeks. "I lost practically my entire family, thanks to you!"

"It wasn't me. Come on, Jessie… what reason do the demons have to rekindle a war now?"

"Um, hello? They're fucking_ demons_? It's not genome science." My reference to elves had fluttered right over her head. So much for subtlety.

I gave the FIB guy an imploring look. "Aren't I supposed to be read my rights and have an attorney and all that? And where's Adrian?" And where was I, anyway? It was a pretty nondescript room, but it didn't have the one-way mirror or feel of an official interrogation room. Or the tangy moulage of decades of fear and defiance, for that matter.

He shifted again, standing ramrod stiff. "You will. This is… off the books." He held out his gun, and I saw that it was of the paintball variety, and his meaning was pretty clear — I'd be having another nap once this all was done, and official processing would begin later. I humphed and gritted my jaw. Of course — though he'd have a devil of a time spelling me again after my saltwater bath. I could see that he was as pissed off about it as I was. Someone higher up was pulling the strings and he was here to make sure the prisoner didn't get too roughed up or allowed to escape. In the meantime, Jessalyn and her thugs got first shot at trying to crack me. At least FIB guy was here to keep things somewhat civil. "Your friend's fine. He's still charmed, but he's fine."

Jessalyn stepped closer, stomping to get my attention. "You tell me why you did this, and what you did. For the love of God, at _least_ tell me where the bodies of my parents are, so I can lay them to rest! If you have an ounce of decency left in you—"

I tried to hold onto my anger, but my heart went out to her. There'd been a time when I wanted to shout similar things at Ash, after all. "Look, I'm sorry about your parents. But… don't you know? I'm working for Ellasbeth! Ask her! She's pretty much ordered me to find out what happened for her. I'm tired of being threatened. And I'm not happy that the Coven's framing me for this, either."

Jessalyn's mouth fell open in a little O, and behind her, the two mooks gave each other matching startled glances. "Beth? Beth hired you…?"

"Seriously. Call her. Right now. Ask her," I insisted. "She's threatened to curse me if I don't find out what she wants before her baby's born. You think I'm lying about something you can verify with a single phone call? You can even ask the Coven — Madam Vivian was there. Last week. She set up the meeting. Sir Adrian was there, too. Wake him up and ask him! Or he can give you Vivian's phone number, if you think he's untrustworthy."

Jessalyn stepped back, confidence gone. She looked from her bodyguards to the FIB guy, then back to me, and whipped out her phone, brows furrowed as she stabbed a few buttons. She glared and tapped her foot as she waited. "Hi, Beth…? Did you… did you tell someone named Evie to find out something about the lab?" She listened for a while, a variety of expressions crossing her pretty face. "Hope? Really? Why?" She listened longer, clutching the phone like it might fly away. "But _why_, when she blew it up — no, we caught her. She's here in the FIB — _What?_" She winced. "But she's right here! We caught her sneaking around campus and — Beth, don't shout! I can't understand you! What do you mean, let her go? Beth, she killed our—" Jessalyn continued protesting until Ellasbeth abruptly cut her off.

Jessalyn stayed frozen, still holding the dead phone to her ear. Eyes wide, she stared at me in bewildered pain. "She's totally freaking out at me. Why's she freaking out?" She wasn't asking me, though I knew the answer to that.

For my part, I was staring back, just as bewildered, mind racing. Jessalyn had called me several insults, but "demon" wasn't one of them. Either Jessalyn wasn't in on my secret, or she didn't want the FIB dude to know it. And if she wasn't in on it, then Jessalyn didn't have the whole story about Hope, either. Jessie had headed up a vigilante team to track and arrest the woman she thought was responsible for killing her parents — now I recognized the mooks as two of the thugs who'd gunned us down at the Starbucks — but she must've been working with the FIB to do it, or FIB dude wouldn't be here. A case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing?

The FIB guy touched his earpiece. "We can't release the suspect, Miss Finn. She's wanted for assault."

Shit. I was in trouble for hurting that poor woman, wasn't I? I bit my lip, suppressing the urge to apologize just in time.

Jessalyn jumped a little, eyes wild. "But… you _have_ to. Ellasbeth says…" She paused, realizing how _that _sounded. "Oh, hell. She's going to kill me," Jessalyn muttered to herself, eyeing the FIB guy and myself, clearly stymied as to how to proceed from here. The phones of the goons behind her both began to buzz angrily, and they simultaneously reached into their pockets to flip them open. I decided that perhaps now was a good time for a little bit of interrogation of my own.

"Jessalyn… can I ask you something?" I tried my best to look harmless, but it was probably obvious that I, too, was still thinking furiously as I spoke. "Do you know about Hope?"

I'd left it open-ended, to see what she'd say. Sure enough, she frowned, looking at the FIB guy. "I know she was sick," she replied. "She got over it."

"Rosewood?" Jessalyn nodded, clearly growing warier. _Jess knows about Hope being a witch, then, and surely she knows her own heritage _—_ so she knows Hope was adopted_. "OK," I said, leaning forward. "But do you know the _significance_ of that?"

A brief frown line appeared between Jessalyn's eyes, as she tried to work out what I was asking. "It happens," she said, glancing at the FIB guy. "I hope you're not implying any kind of… anything illegal."

"No," I said, "I'm a survivor, too. A _spontaneous_ survivor."

Jessalyn's eyebrows rose in surprise, but there were no dawning realizations appearing on her face. I checked off another box on my checklist. _Knows about genetic tinkering. But not about the Rosewood-demon connection._ "Really," she said, feigning disinterest. "Congratulations. That doesn't explain why Ellasbeth hired you to investigate anything for her, though."

I stared at the girl for a long time, and she stared back, both of us obviously weighing up what we knew and what the other might know. "So you don't know… why Hope was adopted, or why she worked for your father, then," I said finally, carefully, working it out in my head. "But your parents, they knew, and so did Ellasbeth's parents. Do you know why they were all having a meeting the night the lab blew, Jessalyn?"

Jessalyn actually took a seat across from me, eyes wide. That call from Ellasbeth had really shaken her convictions, and she was still floundering. "Um… is it important? How do you know about that?"

"Ellasbeth's parents live in Seattle. They came all the way down here for a reason. Maybe Ellasbeth's birth? And your parents were there, and seven other e-e-eemployees." I'd nearly said "elves," and it was pretty obvious. Jessalyn's eyes narrowed as she understood that I knew her little secret, too.

"Yeah. My entire family, other than Beth."

"So they were all in the lab. Did they all work there?"

"N-no…"

Good, I'd got her thinking, too. "Did your parents say anything, anything at all, about why they were all going to be there that night?"

Jessalyn shook her head. "They came down for the birth. It's a pretty big deal, you know, because it's the first… I mean… the first in our family that's… you know. Okay." She couldn't come right out and say that illegal genetic tinkering was about to produce the West Coast's first healthy elven baby.

I couldn't ask what I really wanted to ask, not with Mr. FIB listening in to everything we said. "Sure. Okay. Are you and Hope very close?"

Jessalyn blinked at the abrupt shift in topic. "Well, yeah! We hang out all the time. She's only a year older than me." Her face fell, and tears sparkled in her eyes once more. "_Was_, I mean."

_Jessalyn knew that the girl was adopted, knew she was special… what else did she know? _A nastier thought occurred to me:_ Jessalyn doesn't know Hope's alive. Ellasbeth didn't tell her. Ellasbeth's still certain that Hope is going to Zaebos, isn't she…?_ "You liked her. How did she get on with… your family?"

Sure enough, Jessalyn's face twisted into a frown, all but jumping to protect the secret that her family's illegal genetic tinkering had produced a healthy witch, nothing more. "Why? We all liked her! Sure, she fought with Aunt Bea a lot, but—"

"Aunt Bea?"

"Bea. Beatrice Hazelton. Her mom. My aunt. Hope was my cousin." Jessalyn scowled at my expression. "OK, she was adopted, we all knew that, but we all loved her!"

"And you don't know anything else about why she was adopted by the Hazeltons, other than that they were, uh, experts on her illness?"

Jessalyn took my meaning, but shook her head, scowling. "Altruism, maybe? Maybe you should try learning about it, since it seems like such a foreign concept to you?"

I leveled another glare at her that would have scored the freckles off her, if any such blemishes had dared mar that perfect skin. "Altruism. That's rich." I sighed. "Does the name Delores Mallorie mean anything to you?" I could see that it didn't, and felt suddenly tired. "How about Zaebos?"

Jessalyn just tossed her hair impatiently. "No. What is that, Greek?"

I shrugged. "Demon."

Jessalyn sniffed in disgust, then fixed me with a suspicious glare. "Why do you ask?"

Why the hell not? I gave her my most guileless look. "Didn't you ever notice that Hope had a demon mark on her arm?"

Eyes wide with shock, Jessalyn looked at her bodyguards as if for confirmation, but they just shrugged. "Is that what that was…? But… I don't…"

"Look, I have one right here. Take a look with your second sight. Same thing, right?"

Jessalyn squinted at it with one eye. "No. No, that's got to be wrong." She bolted upright out of her chair, sending it flying. "You really are a demons' familiar, aren't you? Why would Beth hire _you_?"

I tried to keep my face calm, but I'm sure my frustration showed. It was fine when she was angry, or bewildered, but it hurt me inside to see her so suddenly terrified. Of _me._ "No, I'm not. And Beth didn't hire me, she's blackmailing me. There's a difference. Jessalyn… there is so much more going on here than you know. You have to let me get on with the investigating, or there's going to be some seriously bad stuff happening once Ellasbeth has her baby. Please, I know you don't trust me or believe me, but I'm honestly trying to help, here. And I did NOT cause the accident."

"Accident?"

"It wasn't a bomb. It was a magical accident."

"You know what happened! Tell me! Tell me what happened!" Jessalyn looked like she was about to rush forward and shake it out of me.

I glanced at the FIB guy, still stonefaced in the corner. From a small adjustment he'd made to his lapel, I had a sneaking suspicion that he was wired and recording everything that was being said here. Well, good. "I can tell you this much. The Coven doesn't want you to know. And neither does Ellasbeth Withon, or her parents. And the Coven — or rather, its leader, Sir Oliver — is framing me for this, for reasons that have nothing to do with the lab. You want to know who was wandering campus that day?" I asked the FIB guy suddenly, and he blinked at being addressed directly. "Check out the name Delores Mallorie. Ask Luna, Hope's roommate, why Delores was here looking for Hope Hazelton that day. Check the visitor records to the lab, and you'll see Delores was there to visit Hope. I think Delores was looking for her biological daughter. It has nothing to do with the accident in the lab, but there's your answer. It wasn't me. And that's your case, isn't it? Suspicious dark-haired woman trying to get into the lab? It wasn't me. And you can't possibly have any other evidence tying me to this accident, because I've never been to LA in my life before today!"

FIB guy — I really should have found out his name — shifted again, looking agitated. He flipped out a phone and texted something to someone, then put the phone away, still looking deadpan. Jessalyn just stood there looking small and lost, next to the two older men. "Who caused the accident?" she asked in a low, plaintive voice.

I hissed through my teeth, trying to decide if I should tell her or not. Not when the truth was so painful. On the other hand, was it any less unbearable not knowing? "It was someone who perished along with the others," I said finally. "If it's any consolation… I don't think they knew what they were doing. I don't think any of them could have known what was happening. It was probably really quick." I had no idea about that last part, but poor Jess looked like she needed to hear it.

One of Jessalyn's guards was still conducting a private conversation with his hand muting his words; the other put a hand on her shoulder, and she shrugged it off with jerky movements. She was working on another really unpleasant line of thought. "Did…" Her voice cracked a little, as she reluctantly forced herself to complete the words, "Did my dad have something to do with… the accident? This thing with Ellasbeth?"

Compassion won over my urge to snap at her. I had no kind feelings for her dear daddy, who had sent an elven assassin after me merely for _existing_. "I honestly don't know. I was hoping you might know the answer to that, but… apparently the Withons didn't want their… uh, _people_ knowing what they were up to." Again, I gave the word that subtle emphasis, and I saw whites all around poor Jess's irises now. Poor kid.

"And she's making you do something for her. You said she's blackmailing you?" To her credit, Jessalyn didn't sound surprised that Dear Cousin Beth was capable of blackmail. But she did glance belatedly at the FIB dude, who was also not looking at all surprised that Dear Cousin Beth was capable of blackmailing someone. Suddenly this whole stupid situation made a hell of a lot more sense. Except this time Dear Cousin Beth's family influence had just come back to bite her in the ass, which amused me to no end.

"Am I under arrest, or can I go now?" I asked brightly. "I mean, I'm happy to tell you all about it, but then I'd have to press charges and all kinds of bad things might come to light, and Bethie might get all huffy at all of us."

Goon #2 held a texted message before Jessalyn's face, and what little color she'd had drained away. "You can go."

FIB guy shifted again. "Miss Finn, I hate to remind you, but she's still officially under arrest."

The germ of an idea occurred to me, and I felt a cruel, cruel smile curve over my lips. Perhaps living with demons had taught me more than just magic. Or maybe I was inspired by Rachel's last-resort strategy of using the FIB to her advantage. In any case, I decided now was the time for some demon-worthy theatrics.

"Gentlemen, lady, I would like to make two points very clear." I took a breath and yanked, using every ounce of my demon speed and strength while trying to make it look effortless. I'd thought the wood would crack, but the links of the handcuffs parted first. I then made a show of casually pulling the metal band around my wrist until the hinges gave out, suppressing the wince of pain and grunt of effort it should have cost me. I tossed the distorted bit of metal aside, and its clatter was three times louder in the utter silence. Next, the zip strip; using the technique Pierce had taught me, I ran a finger around the inside until it expanded enough that I could slip it off my wrist. My acting must have been more riveting than I'd thought, because they'd all stayed frozen in place until I stood up. Then paintballs from three different pistols pinged and popped against my hastily erected circle, which encircled me and a stunned, startled Jessalyn.

"Stop that," I ordered, bending to retrieve the two paintballs that had made it before I'd gotten the circle up. They hadn't struck me, and even more amazingly were still mostly intact. Had I been built (and dressed) like Rachel, perhaps I would have gone for a sexy dominant pose… but I was more of Ash's protégé, and that wasn't his style. He was far more of the easily-underestimated accountant type who only turned into a psycho-killer… or sex god… when you took off his glasses. So instead I went for my They Pay Me Whether You Shut Up or Not, and I Can Stand Here All Day stoically bored pose that I used to cool unruly classes instead, ignoring the threats and posturing of the other three men. When that failed miserably, I pulped the little paintballs in my hand, letting them see that the sleepy-time charm was having no effect on me thanks to my previous saltwater bath. The little puddle of potion in my palm would drop Jessalyn quite nicely, though. The threat was clear, though I made no other movement.

Jess was staring at me in consternated wariness, wavering between terror and pissiness, and I winked at her. I couldn't help it. I didn't want her terrified — in fact, it'd be nice if she were on my side. Jess jerked back in surprise before her lip curled, and after giving me a brief sour-lemon look, she turned to face the others. "All right, knock it off. See what she wants."

To my irritation, they listened to_ her. _They lowered their weapons and waited with equally sour faces as I recalled that I had a speech I'd been planning, and launched into it. "First, you can't contain me. I am here of my own free will, and will cooperate as long as you guys keep things legal. First whiff of Coven or IS interference, and I am out of here, in a way that leaves you looking like a bunch of incompetent dweebs."

Jessalyn spared a glance for her two guards, but mostly she was regarding me with an expression that was far more worried than terrified. Her eyes traveled to the silver around my wrist, then crawled over my smut-stained circle, clearly bewildered as to how I was managing to tap a line. I wasn't; I was tapping Ash, and he was once again pounding on the walls of my psyche demanding to know what was happening. Damned nosy demon… this was going to get old real quick, if I had to explain myself every time I used my new familiar. I batted at him as if he were a mental fly, telling him to buzz off. "Second," I continued, "I need to get on with my own investigation without being hunted by every human, were, and witch under the sun. So get my name out of the news, and get me through the system and out on bail so I can get on with it."

I sat down in my chair again, and there was a jingle as my foot hit the other ring of the handcuff still fastened to the chair leg. I wiped the potion off on my wet pants, grimacing, then laced my fingers together, sitting there as primly as if I were a pretty princess on my throne and looking at them all expectantly. The stink of the potion, funky saltwater, and cinnamon latte mingled with the stink of frightened human, elf, and demon as I dropped the circle again. It was a show of pure bravado, as FIB dude had put his splat gun back and was now fingering a real gun. Could an undrawn circle stop an actual bullet? Could I raise another circle fast enough? I hoped I wouldn't find out the hard way. I kept my worry from showing, but only just.

"Jessalyn, step away from her," one of the goons growled.

"Get a grip, Calvin," Jessalyn snapped. The import of my actions had dawned on her. "You could totally blow your way out of here, couldn't you?"

I had my doubts on that point, but I just kept on grinning like sweet Mary Poppins on crack. "Go on. Throw the book at me. Oh—I'm afraid that Jessie here will just have to post my bail, because I'm broke at the moment. You know, what with being a demon familiar and all."

"What? Oh my God." Jessalyn gave me a look that was both agonized and pleading. "Can't you just… bust out? It'd make things easier."

I just sat back and shook my head, though the grin was twisting from sweet to manic. "Sorry, hon. You went vigilante, and you caught me fair and square. I'm not going anywhere until I get due process."

Four blank faces stared at me, nonplussed, though FIB guy was looking more sour than the others. "Are you waiving your right to remain silent?"

"Hell, no. I want my phone call, and I want a lawyer." My grin grew toothier and my voice even cheerier. "Only… I can't afford one. So Jessie here is going to get me the best attorney she can find. Preferably one who's all in the family, if you catch my drift?" Jessalyn's eyes widened again as she got my meaning. "Because she really doesn't want me spilling sensitive family secrets to any old public defender, _does she_?"

Jessalyn actually smacked her forehead on the table. "Oh God. She's going to kill me. They're all going to kill me. I am so fucking dead."

"I'm tempted to say there's a lesson about vigilantism in here," I said, but Jessalyn's unhappy glare stopped me. The kid really was looking miserable, and I wasn't entirely sure she deserved it. I was the expert on bad decisions following traumatic events, after all. "If Ellasbeth has a family attorney, call him. Ask him if he knows about Zaebos… if he does, tell him that I know what happened to his clients. I guarantee he'll want to talk to me ASAP."

She flipped out her phone, scowling, and began pecking buttons like mad. Soon she was demanding to speak to a Mrs. Sienna Quinlan. The name pinged in my memory, but I couldn't recall where I'd heard it. "Yes, it's urgent. I don't care. The amount we're paying her, you'll pull her from a phone call with God! …OK, I… OK, I'll hold."

As she sat there stewing herself into a lovely shade of pink, I turned to the FIB guy. "I'm not letting you charm me. Either put me under arrest or admit you haven't got anything on me and let me go."

FIB guy wanted to draw his gun, I could tell, but he didn't. Instead he launched into the Miranda Rights, as I smiled and nodded because it had been that kind of day. Then there came the moment when he felt for his cuffs, realized that they were currently in pieces all over the floor, and looked stymied. Time for more theatrics! "Allow me," I said helpfully, picking up the bits and using a stored simple fixit curse to repair them. Al had assigned me dozens of them prior to allowing me to brew the more complicated potion that repaired living things, and I was loaded with them. Grinning, I handed them back to the FIB officer, who held them at arm's length between finger and thumb.

Jessalyn snapped her phone shut. "Beth already sent her, right after I called. She's on her way."

FIB guy and me were still facing each other down with the cuffs still dangling like a dead mouse between us. "No, I'm not putting them back on for you," I said helpfully. "Can't we all just get along?"

"This could be considered resisting arrest," he warned.

"You have no idea how much trouble I'm considering making here," I replied sweetly. "I don't know what Ellasbeth has on you guys, but she's relying on my good will toward witchkind, not anything I've actually done wrong. I won't say a word about the shenanigans you've been up to, though, if you revive my friend and take us both to a nice public place where lots of people are watching the witch being all cooperative and treated according to what the law demands."

"But if we're playing by those rules, we should turn you over to the IS," he grumbled.

"Not at all! Not when that lab was owned and run by _humans_, right?" He didn't bat an eye at the mistake. Nope, FIB didn't know about the elves. I stretched, wishing I could get a real shower, not the saltwater kind. "If I ever find out what really happened, and I can prove it, I will totally let you know. The FIB can have all the credit as long as my name gets cleared."

This generous offer got the condescending glare it deserved. "We're perfectly capable of solving crimes without the help of amateur detectives, Miss Sinclaire. Emphasis on the _amateur_."

"Tsk! We found out about Delores, didn't we? Don't tell me your buddies aren't following up on that little clue, just now." I was just yanking his chain, now. I was very much in agreement with him, to be honest.

His glare eased a little as his eyebrows rose. "We already knew about Delores Mallorie. We didn't want to make the knowledge public without stronger evidence linking her to the crime," he countered.

"You mean you didn't want to contradict Oliver, in case he was right and made you look like a bunch of idiots," I said. "What's it going to look like when you let me go this afternoon, then?"

He humphed, unconcerned. "It's going to look like you have a really fucking awesome lawyer, same as half the other folks in this town."

Fair enough. That had to be pretty frustrating… "You know about Delores. Do you guys know where she is?" His reply was a wide-eyed "_you tell me"_ expression. "I'm going to make a spell to track her. It'd look pretty stupid if we end up right back here."

"I'm not at liberty to say," he said, the line sounding well-worn. "My advice to you is to drop it, Miss Sinclaire, and in the future, I suggest you steer clear of nosing around crime scenes where you are a suspect, innocent or not. You were remarkably easy to track."

"Wait, what? How_ did_ you track us?" I asked, intrigued. "We had magical disguises, and aura dampeners, and everything demons and Coven could-"

"What, you don't have some fancy spell to figure that out?" FIB guy told me smugly. "You're the hot-shit detective, you tell me."

I cocked my head, thinking, as I allowed FIB guy to re-zip me with a fresh zip strip. The FIB didn't use magic. It had to be something tech-y. "You have some kind of binoculars that resist charms. You had someone plant bugs on our clothes. You have undercover ninjas stationed at the library. You… have a network of uber-smart cameras for monitoring and tracking potential student dissidents at UCLA…"

"Oh, shut up," Jessalyn grumbled, sensing that FIB guy was in danger of cracking a smile. "We just tracked your buddy's cell phone. _Duh_."

_Oh. Yeah. _Did I mention that I have a deep and abiding suspicion of cell phones? Adrian was ditching that sucker as soon as I got him back.


	25. The Coven Strikes Back

iction M - English - Drama/Romance - Chapters: 25 - Words: 90,532 - Reviews: 71 - Favs: 11 - Follows: 12 - Updated: 07-10-12 - Published: 08-18-11 - id: 7299694

A a Abc Abc Abc

_WOW this summer's been whacky. Moving? SUCKS! But at least we're about 25% settled in now. Anyone still reading this? It's been awfully quiet around here…thanks again, Deus3xmachina, for helping me keep going! Believe it or not, I've got most of the ending mapped out._

**In Which Evie Forgets Her Folklore**

The next hour was filled with legalese and legal threats and perhaps barely-legal bargaining as my new lawyer pulled off every trick in the book to get me legally in the clear. It wasn't hard; they really didn't have any evidence tying me to the lab. When the guard I'd attacked came in to identify me, all it took was a hint from my lawyer that that the free facelift and newly pristine skin could be reversed, and the woman suddenly decided that the amulet had been faulty, and that I'd merely taken advantage of a freak accident to get away — after pausing to be a good Samaritan and save her life.

I enjoyed watching the woman work. I'd never seen an elf who didn't have pristine white skin and pale hair to go with it. This elf was… well… copper. Absolutely beautiful, clear copper skin that looked lit from within by a golden sun, with absolutely straight glossy black hair she wore in a multi-stranded, complicated braid. Actually, I guessed that her pixy friend(s) had done that, given that her legal assistant was a pixy girl with miniature clipboard, sitting on her shoulder. Pixies never lived alone, as far as I knew, which meant Mrs. Sienna Quinlin had a clan of them probably living in her extensive gardens. I found her hair fascinating — it had that same wispy, floaty quality that Ceri's did, but it also had sort of an iridescence to it, like feathers or insect wings. She smelled like an elf, though, with sort of a toasty quality to the cinnamon, and a cider-y quality in the wine. Her eyes were very dark brown, and she was also the first elf I'd ever seen who didn't look like a wispy little willow branch. She was buxom, with a lush hourglass figure and surprisingly muscular thighs that showed under her dainty business suit skirt. Her arms were well-toned as well. She looked like she could wipe the floor with me, demon strength or not. I was glad she was on my side.

Well, "on my side" was an overstatement. It was also clear that she knew perfectly well who and what I was, and that she was channeling all of her distaste at being forced to defend me into achieving that goal as quickly as elvenly possible. It gave her a serious "don't fuck with me" air that had several of the FIB lower-downs nearly trembling and bending over backwards when she glared at them, while the higher-ups just stood there with a stoic browbeaten air and let her get on with it.

She was related by marriage to the elf I'd killed in self-defense. She'd informed me of this when we met, while I was still dazzled by her entrance. Shane Quinlan the homicidal nurse had been her nephew, and she very gravely informed me that when this was over, I'd have some explaining to do. By which, she said coldly, she meant that she would do her level best to get me legally off the hook, and then she'd be out of my life until we met again, at which point I'd better hope it wasn't a new moon night. I suddenly pictured her riding some stallion bareback under a new moon, perhaps with a quiver of arrows over her shoulder and hounds at her side, and shivered.

But for now, Sienna Quinlan was being entirely professional, and had even filed a complaint against Oliver on my behalf, for pointing fingers at me for two separate incidents that were completely not my fault. I wasn't sure if it was slander or libel or a restraining order, but that wasn't really the point. The point was to get media attention — and accusing the leader of the Coven of heading a smear campaign was big news, at least to the witchy gossip rags. Petty of me, maybe, but right now it felt pretty damned satisfying.

All the while I still hadn't seen Adrian, though I was told over and over that he was fine, awake, and would be with me shortly. I trusted that about as much as I trusted Ms. Quinlan's benevolence. I winced. OK, in hindsight, maybe calling Oliver out had been a bad idea. My lawyer had given it a bit of thought before suggesting it, and now I wondered if I'd just made a mistake in trusting her. My sense of dread grew, almost a tangible thing, as if doom was lurking in the closet. Actually, that wasn't a bad metaphor. I literally felt like something — elves outside, or maybe hidden ninja assassins in the next room over — were waiting for me, to do something horrible and terrible and vicious. It was close, totally irrational, and it was making me antsy.

I'd explained things to Ash, and while he was pissed off at Adrian, he agreed that I should let things take their course. He got a kick out of the whole elf snafu, then told me seriously that I had best be very careful when speaking to Newt — apparently, she was really upset about something having to do with Hope. Great. More to worry about. Now all I needed was a call from Ellasbeth informing me of her labor, or maybe an attempt on my life by Zaebos or Oliver, and my day would be complete.

Now I was sitting in the front waiting room, along with a tired-looking older woman and a couple with a five year old who was hopped up on sugar — all humans. They'd given up trying to control the kid, and she was running around and climbing over the ring of chairs making various cat noises. (I didn't ask.) At one point she squinted at me, then scooted back to her parents to report in a loud whisper that my aura looked dirty. Her parents looked too tired to care, though they told her to leave me alone (in a tone that suggested it was more for my sake than for hers). They must have some elf blood in them somewhere, to be able to see auras, but their blasé air suggested they didn't care much about magic one way or another. Despite their nonchalance, I felt my gut twist with dread again, and actually craned my neck to look around me, expecting to see something unnatural lurking in the corner. Nothing. The humans didn't seem affected, so I brushed it off as paranoia.

I looked up again as Ms. Quinlan approached. "The last of the paperwork has been filed. You're free to go," she said, mild distain marring her perfect face. Her pixy was absent from her shoulder, presumably off filing… or perhaps hacking into the FIB mainframe, who knew?

"Not without Adrian. And I wanted to ask you about something else," I said, and she cocked her head. "You never said if you knew anything about Hope or the contract with Zee."

Her cold features grew frosty. Yup. This woman had attended the Ice Princess Academy for Elves, too. "I assure you, had the parties in question been so idiotic as to consort with _your _people on any matter, I would have been there to negotiate."

"Except they did, and you weren't," I said, feeling more tired than irritated. "Well, hell. That means I still have to track down Delores after all."

"My client was extremely specific that I was to assist you in your inquiries in any way I could. I may have information about Delores Mallorie you would find useful." She was silent for a few seconds, weighing her words. "I would prefer to conduct this conversation in a more private location."

Fair enough. We relocated to a small break room down a hall, crowded by three uncomfortable plastic chairs around a battered card table, a sink embedded in a countertop that was only just big enough for it and an ancient microwave , a water cooler, and a minifridge. It was one of those break rooms that ensured your lunch break would be short and to the point. My eyes wandered to the fridge, where someone had tacked a passive-aggressive note regarding a rash of stolen Oreos. In an FIB station?

Ms. Quinlan settled herself gracefully into one of the ugly chairs, and launched right into the sordid details. "My client's parents run a mixed witch/human fertility clinic in Seattle. It is a front for research into the genetic causes of Rosewood syndrome in witches. You are familiar with the basics of genetic inheritance?"

I nodded. Pre-Turn, when I was young, genetic knowledge had been growing exponentially, and was a required college course. I'd considered majoring in it at the time. Nowadays it was mostly forbidden knowledge, but everyone knew the basics when it came to the incurable genetic disorders that still plagued human and witch populations. Inherited characteristics of people, like hair and eye color, were carried in genes, part of our DNA. Everyone had two copies of every gene, only one of which they donated to their kids. In the case of Rosewood, if you had one copy of the diseased Rosewood gene and one normal gene, you were OK. If you got two diseased copies, one from each parent, your immune system attacked your own mitochondria. The mitochondria are the batteries of your cells, so when they kicked the bucket, so did you.

"Rosewood syndrome is more complex than the single-gene model we've presented to the public. It involves a number of transcription factors — do you know what those are?" She leaned to one side and poured herself a little paper cup of water from the water cooler.

I nodded, dredging up lessons from over thirty years back. "Genes that turn on other genes, because not all the genes we have are turned on all the time."

She raised her eyebrows a fraction. "Yes. The details aren't important. We've been attempting to understand the damage to the witch genome."

_Genome. A person's entire batch of DNA, even the dead and never-used genes and all the space in between them_, my brain supplied. Why would the elves care what the curse did? Most witches survived just fine, right?

"It basically boils down to the scrambling of a handful of genes," she continued. " Over the past five thousand years, the genes have been recombining and mutating, as they do in all creatures."

_Mutating_ I knew, but for _Recombining_ I had to dip into ancient memories again. _Moving around, jumping from one place to another, mixing and matching bits whenever sperm or egg cells are made._ I was getting irritated at her use of the technical terms that most people wouldn't know, though. Was she trying to make me feel like an idiot? Probably she was merely trying to be precise, but I barely kept from growling, _Could you speak English, please? The biology lesson is giving me a headache. _Instead I just nodded.

She gave me a slightly crooked smile. She probably thought I didn't have a clue what she was saying. Let her. I didn't feel a need to impress, and being underestimated was my defense mode of choice. "You may not have heard this, but Rosewood cases have increased over the past five generations of witches."

I waited, not seeing the connection at all. "So has the size of the overall witch population," I said.

Her teeth flashed with the hint of a smile. She held up a second little paper cup of water, silently asking if I would like it. A little surprised at her polite gesture, I took it. "Normally a zygote that inherits two Rosewood genes fails to implant," she replied, and I translated the medicalese to English in my head: _mostly they die right after the egg is fertilized_. "We believe that it used to be rare for a fetus to survive to term, let alone survive the one-year average lifespan we see today."

"Better health care?" I countered as another explanation, and after a pause we both snickered. Modern health care sucked compared to the medical miracles we'd achieved prior to the Turn. Witchy remedies helped, but couldn't replace what had been lost. "So we're seeing more cases of Rosewood now, because more, uh, babies with two Rosewood genes are sticking around after fertilization and growing to term?" She nodded, bemused. "You're saying that witches… are getting better? That we might be undoing the curse on our own?"

"Unclear. It might be more accurate to say that witches are _evolving_ new ways around it."

I let that sink in for a moment, sipping the water as I put it all together. Elves continuing to degrade as witches began to improve. Elven research facility to research the issues. Elves finding ways to "cure" it. Benevolence? My ass. _You're not trying to _solve _Rosewood at all, are you…? You're trying to _contain_ it. To ensure that if witches do begin to return to their full power, you can sabotage it. Or at least make them beholden to you for it._

Rather than voice my unflattering conclusion, I just made a "hmm" of interest, then got back to the practical issue at hand. . "So that's what Dr. Finn was studying? That's what the Withons' clinic was a front for? They see witches suffering from fertility issues. Said fertility issues often caused by Rosewood alleles in the parents? And off the DNA samples go to Dr. Finn, who figures out how witches are starting to get around the curse?" She nodded, drawing a second cup of water for herself as I recalled why we were even discussing this topic. "So then Delores comes in with her husband. Why Delores in particular?"

Sienna Quinlan shrugged. "She and her husband had the right combination of genetic factors."

_Yeah, right._ Interesting that the Withons hadn't even told their lawyer about who Delores was actually unknowingly sleeping with. _God, poor Delores._

"Through our intervention, three infants survived to term. But the treatment for Rosewood was not yet perfected—"

"Bullshit. Rachel and Lee were cured by then," I said bluntly.

"When Hope was born, yes, the cure had been perfected. But Delores had two previous children, both boys, during the fifteen years prior. One of them succumbed at six; the other is alive. We believe she contacted him, after finding him by using the tracking curse she utilized to track down Hope."

My mouth fell open. "She has another kid who's alive? And she found him? What happened?"

"He's extremely physically and mentally challenged. The treatment was not fully successful and left him with developmental damage."

I suddenly felt sick. "Where is he?"

"In a group home. He works as a janitor at the clinic, when he is well enough. I would ask that you do not contact him, as he is in… delicate health after Delores's visit."

"I'll bet." I couldn't see a need to do so, if I could find Delores herself… but I made a note to track him down if I couldn't find her. God, this was turning into something even more dreadful than I'd thought. I finished the water, grimacing at the heavy paper flavor. "Honestly, Mrs. Quinlan, how can you justify stealing a baby from someone, then subjecting it to untested genetic treatments?"

She cleared her throat, looking cool and collected. "Nothing was stolen."

"Umm… how do you figure that?"

"It was a fair and equal exchange."

I gaped. She was serious. One dying baby for another, a fair and equal exchange. "And the fact that Delores didn't know—"

"She was fully aware from the moment each infant was born that they were doomed. We did not add to her pain; in fact the three changeling children died far sooner than her own children would have. The exchange was benevolent."

My mouth worked for a moment before I found words. "You're serious? So if I decided to steal something from you and left something of equal value in exchange, you'd be peachy keen with it?"

"If it was truly of equal value, then yes. Of course,_ value_ is determined by more than mere monetary worth."

"And the whole experimenting on infants thing? That's totally justifiable too?"

She regarded me coldly. "What other option is there? We have done nothing to the children of our enemies that we have not first subjected our own infants to, in the name of survival. Their lives are forfeit without our intervention. And I do not feel moved to further justify our actions to you."

I winced. OK, it was hard to accept, but I guess I saw her point there. The old switcheroo thing, though, that was just so hideously callous I couldn't wrap my head around it. One could use the same argument to justify tricking Delores into sleeping with Zee — after all, from a twisted magical perspective, one could argue that Zee's genes were even better than those of the witch's husband. And if neither of them were any the wiser, there was no emotional pain involved.

I wanted to ask what Delores was entitled to under elven custom now, when there now was a good deal of emotional pain involved, but I'm sure my contempt was showing already. And what about the elven parents who'd donated their own doomed children? Were they so callous after centuries of infant death that they no longer cared? Damn. Geez, elves could be assholes. But she'd stop talking if I outright insulted her, and what she was telling me was vital. I thought. I settled for mashing the crumpled the cup in my hand and dropping it onto the table, determined to wring more information out of her before she clammed up completely. "OK, fascinating as this is, none of this really helps me. How did Delores figure out the deception?"

Sienna shrugged. "I have no idea."

"How many other witch babies have been successfully treated using this… protocol?"

"To my knowledge, none besides Hope and her sibling were successfully treated by the Withons. We ended our development of the treatment protocol when Trenton Kalamack's team found a better method."

I waited for the punchline to that, but it wasn't forthcoming. "But not the study of witch genes?" I prompted, and she merely shrugged. "So that's it? You weren't planning on helping any other witches? Just Hope?"

She gestured for the cup, and I flicked it to her with a forefinger. "We never intended on making the cure widely available. To do so would be to doubly foolish, first for revealing our engagement in illegal genetic research, and secondly because to do so would trigger a genocide if the true origins of the witch population were ever revealed." She turned to toss the cups into the trashcan behind her chair. "Even so, we might have offered it to a few, had not your own Coven of Moral and Ethical Standards decided years ago that it must be suppressed at all costs. Apparently, they felt that three daywalking demons were quite enough."

Three demons…Rachel, Lee, and Hope? She smiled as I sat dazed at the news of this bombshell. "Holy shit. Are you telling me that the Coven _knew_ about Hope already? How much did they know?"

She opened her purse and retrieved a lipstick, which she applied with expert skill _sans _mirror. Tucking it away again with a little snap, she stood. "This conversation has been most… profitable. Do allow me to wish you fair fortune in your quest to find this mysterious nonexistent contract." She swept abruptly from the room, leaving me floundering to come up with an answer. I had a really, really bad feeling that my life was about to take another turn for the even more complicated and much, much worse.

_The Coven knew._

That they knew about the cure, sure. They knew about Rachel and Lee. But had they known about Hope all this time, too? I couldn't imagine Oliver going along with it. Adrian had said that the Coven was funding elven genetic research, particular the Sairobi Institute, to help them fix their genomes… had that been a lie of omission? Had he known?

No, not Adrian. Adrian was as clueless about all this as I was, or I'd eat my shorts. But Oliver…?

I wandered out of the room in a daze, wanting to meet up with Adrian as soon as possible. As if conjured by my thoughts, however, I saw the wrong Coven member. There was Oliver, staring tiredly out of the suspended TV screen in the lobby, holding a press conference. His expression was his benevolent public face, his voice full of wise-old-man dignity.

_Oh, shit._

The story completed before I was close enough to make out the words, but the scrolling closed captioning on the bottom read, "…no choice but to dissolve it, in the face of these clear and present dangers to our safety." This was followed by commentary by the CNN anchors, both humans, who speculated that Something Sinister and Suspicious was definitely going down in the witch community and that this could have Very Serious Consequences for Inderlanders and humans alike. I was ready to shake the screen and scream, "What? WHAT DOES?" when my sense of dread amped up to eleven, coalescing in a point behind me.

I whirled, ready to raise my circle, only to see very forlorn Adrian in the doorway. He was holding his traitorous cell phone in his hand, but it may as well have been a handgun pointed between my eyes, the way my heart was racing. Confused, I just asked, "Adrian? What's going on?"

His expression was one of bleak shock. "I've been _shunned_." He just stared at me helplessly, as I recognized that this was what the shunning felt like from the _other _side.

This was how I made every other witch in my vicinity feel — like I was a monster, dangerous, to be avoided and reviled and driven out with pitchforks and torches. Prior to the Turn, a shunning would provoke this reaction from any sentient being, witch or no – but after the whole Salem incident, not to mention the new PR campaign to get humans to accept witches as harmless , the Coven had modified it such that only witches would detect the subtle taint of the spell. Coven magic at its finest and most cruel. That Adrian had overcome the feelings of dread I must have engendered in him to work with me… to trust me… was nothing short of amazing.

_And now look where it's gotten him_, I thought, guilt hammering home the message.

"Oh, Adrian…" I wanted to cry. No, I wanted to strangle Oliver and Vivian. No doubt our library adventure had made its way to the Coven, and Oliver and Viv were pissed off.

"We've _both_ been shunned," he said numbly. "Viv, too. Oliver's… he's… he's taken over the Coven."


	26. Shunned

_Still here! Just swamped...but still squeezing in time to write now and then!_**  
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**In Which Things Are Not Going Well For Pretty Much Anyone Anymore**

"Both of you?! Vivian, too? I don't get it," I admitted, as Adrian slumped down onto a chair and handed me his cell phone. "What did she do? Did she tell you anything?"

Adrian's explanation was slow and distracted. "She was with Oliver all week, cleaning up after the Ku'Sox mess in St. Louis. It took them a whole five days to arrange for the others to go home…you know. Amanda and Wyatt and Mary." I winced in sympathy, imagining what the denizens of St. Louis must be going through after the psychotic demon's rampage. "Oliver was already pissed at me over working with you—gave me an earful yesterday after we banished you. Technically I'm forbidden to even be associating with you."

I nodded, unsurprised, but half my attention was still reading the scrolling words on the CNN ticker. "Adrian…"

"Viv fought with him yesterday," he continued. "She went to Seattle to convince Ellasbeth to accept Coven protection—"

"Adrian, look."

An earlier portion of the Oliver interview, regarding the need to crack down on those who used black magic. He was discussing smut, how it was more than a mere stain on the aura, but indicative of a deep character flaw that only widened with time, making black magic an addiction worse than the call of the ley lines. Friends and families of ley line users were urged to encourage them once again to be careful not to exceed the recommended daily exposure levels. Anyone who'd had close contact with the day-walking, soul-eating demon (and managed to survive) was to be examined for signs of moral corruption, in case the contagion was spreading. Also to be avoided was Rachel Morgan, who was thought to have perished in the fray, but who had survived and whose whereabouts were currently unknown. And of course, Yvette Sinclaire, the other black witch known to consort with demons and use black magic with no respect for Coven law. The Coven hotline flashed across the screen again in case any of the wanted witches, including the two shunned ex-Coven members, were spotted. They were to be considered desperate and extremely dangerous, not to be approached, shunned at all costs.

The anchors began to speculate on what was going on—apparently Oliver had been reluctant to explain why he'd booted out the last two Coven members. Was it related to the rumors that Sir Adrian was aiding and abetting the black witch currently wanted for the bombing of a lab at UCLA? "Oh, shit," I said, feeling my heart sink to a new low as various students described what they'd seen go down at the library. Did anyone know where we were now? It didn't look like it…but it was probably a good idea to get out of here now, while the getting was good.

I hadn't thought I could hate Oliver any worse than I already did, but here it was. What the hell was his game now?

Adrian shook his head mutely. "I don't understand. He doesn't know about my deal with Ash, I'm sure of it. And Viv…they fought all the time, but I can't think of anything she would have done that would make him _shun_ her. She was looking into the Delores thing." He handed me the phone and put his head in his hands as I read the series of text messages from Vivian:

**1:05AM ** _E not labor yet but soon. Didn't want coven protection. Will chek out Mallorie for U since U asked so nice. U owe me one Goofus._

**1:59AM** _ DM house nobody home. Going in._

**2:45AM** _Goof you wil not believe this. Pile of papers and a really hungry cat. Wherever she is, she never came home. most interesting- DM ex-husband email printout says he's sterile. He's not father of their kids and he's pissed off at her. I'm confused, isn't he the one who filed missing person report? Here is his phone #: (206)555-1974. Too early to call now. You do it later. You know I hate calling strangers._

**2:50AM** _Found recept for 3 tracking charms, dated two weeks ago. $6370.31?! Someone ripped her off. Or she was just that desperate?_

**2:59AM** _News Tribune obit__., 1989, Brendn Kallasea, age 4. Says he's human but Kallasea is elf name. One of DM's other kids? Said he died of unspecified genetic disorder. Rosewood? _

**3:00AM**_ Hello?_

**3:03AM** _found letter from speciesverify dot com. DM kept some baby stuff, had DNA tested. Kids not hers. Not even witch OR human. WTF? Must be elven kid switched at birth like E said. Not just Hope, then, but all three kids?_ _ 2 (maybe 3?) different adopted families?_

**3:04AM** _Googlemap directions for address, says Devon Kallasea at top. Date at the top is three days before lab accident. Also in trash can, Googlemap directions to Snoqualmie Fertility Consultants and Midwifery Center, dated same day. Yep that's the clinic connected to Withons. Both in dinky Inderlander town outside Seattle, Snoqualmie._

**3:12AM** _OK here's what I think happend. DM finds out her dead kids weren't actually her kids, figured out her babies stolen. Gets tracking chamrs. Uses her blood for spell. First spell leads to dead kid Brendon K, adopted son from "human" elven family. Next leads to Devon K, who lives in small assisted living appartment. Third leads to Hope. She follows it all the way to UCLA and shows up day of bomb. Seems like a smart lady from notes here but didn't make elf connection. OK you were right this is interesting and Im going to check out Devon and Withon clinic. Doesn't look like DM went there tho- at least she doesn't have it in her notes here. _

**3:13AM**_ You're welcome, idiot. Are you even getting these?_

**4:15AM** _OMG Snoqualmie is cutest quaintest lil mountain town ever. No wonder Inderlanders snatched it up after Turn when humans fled to city. Lots of elves here. _

**4:31AM**_ No answer at DK appt. Nobody answering from any appt buzzers. Can't get in, bldg protected from break-in by wards. Come back later after approval to force entry from O. Clinic next._

"And that's it," Adrian said, after I'd finished reading the series of texts and handed back his traitorous little device. "There's nothing else after that. Viv's not answering her phone." Adrian was still slumped on one of the connected rows of chairs in the waiting room, still damp from his recent salt bath. The human family had snatched up their protesting kid and beat a hasty retreat the minute he'd entered, eying Adrian with suspicious expressions. Odd… it wasn't supposed to work on humans. Oliver must have been feeling particularly vicious. Even Adrian's perpetually bouncing leg was subdued, managing only a halfhearted wiggle now and then. "Then, ten minutes ago, BAM. Shunned. Both of us. Oliver won't answer my calls."

I glanced at the clock. 5:53AM. We'd wasted a large part of the night in our charmed sleep, and it was getting close to sunrise. "If you haven't talked to her, how can you tell?"

"I can just feel it. We're all connected." I must have looked awfully confused. "The Coven? It's a little mini-collective. Like the one the demons made? Except smaller. And not anything like as powerful. But we have our Coven-specific spells…" He trailed off. "I'm worried something's happened to Viv."

I was still processing the idea that witches could even form a lasting collective, even a small one. I mean, I knew spontaneous collectives could form anywhere, but to _sustain_ one was like herding cats. It just didn't last. It occurred to me there was a lot about the Coven I didn't know, and that they knew a lot more about demons than I'd thought. "Do you think Oliver found out about your deal with Ash?"

Adrian looked at his phone. "Huh? No. I don't know. I don't think either of them know about it yet."

"So Oliver just shunned you both for the hell of it? Adrian, that doesn't make any sense. Even he's not _that_ nuts."

"I didn't think so either. Ku'Sox really fucked with his head. He's been on the edge ever since we lost Mary and Wyatt and Amanda." Adrian's voice was rough now. Even though he'd just made a deal with the devil (or a reasonable facsimile of the bastard), he'd done it because he believed he had to, to serve and protect the witches effectively. The Coven was his entire life. He might have said "screw it," but his defeated slump told a far different story about how serious and committed he was to his calling.

"Adrian… I…" I couldn't find the words. Adrian knew how badly I'd been screwed over by the Coven recently. I couldn't exactly say I was sorry, could I? I squirmed and cast a quick calming charm on myself, trying to counteract the effects of the shunning on my rapidly rising levels of paranoid anxiety. But the timing was just too coincidental. "It's because you're helping me, isn't it? I had my lawyer say nasty legal things to him about his harassment. He's taking it out on you, isn't he?"

Adrian looked up at me with haunted puppy-dog eyes. He didn't deny it. "What lawyer?"

I filled him in on my conversation with Sienna Quinlan, and what I'd learned. Between her words and Vivian's texts, we had a pretty good idea of what had happened with Delores- and maybe why Aiden Finn was so upset on the day of the bombing. Adrian's brow crinkled as I talked genetics, butchering the explanation in the process. "I wouldn't be surprised if Oliver and Brooke knew about Hope. It's no secret that they were both interested in finding the cure when DNA was discovered back in the forties," he said.

"Wait, really?"

"Yeah, they were young once, too. When they were plumbers. They were working with some of the top labs. Human labs," he clarified. "But they knocked it off after the higher-ups got serious with threats — and Oliver eventually came to see their point of view. Brooke, obviously, never gave it up; she just got more discrete about it. What else did she tell you?"

"Not much more, just the bit about the transcription things and evolution—"

Adrian thought hard, brow furrowed. "That's nothing we didn't already know."

"That Rosewood cases are on the rise?"

"That, too… honestly, she didn't really tell you anything useful. She didn't do or say anything else?"

I shrugged. "She said she was under orders to help, but you're right. She didn't, not really." I thought over the odd little interview, and her abrupt exit after dropping the bombshell about the Coven. Except, was it really a bombshell? I mean, I was working with the Coven, surely Adrian would have told me. "Did you know the Coven knew about the cure and was trying to suppress it?" Then I remembered he'd told me pretty much exactly that, not a day ago, back in Trent Kalamack's gardens.

"Well, yeah," he said. "Oliver's been freaking out about the Rosewood thing for years. And lately he's been going on about not just making demon summoning illegal, but even possession of a demon textbook or curse. He's been making noises about about cracking down on anyone with smut on their aura, even though smut's not just limited to demon curses. He's desperate to keep people from knowing about the connection between Rosewood and demon magic. So yeah, that's not exactly news."

I huffed in irritation, baffled. The Oliver information was disturbing, to say the least, but my attention was still caught up in trying to figure out the lawyer's actions. "She wanted something, but damned if I know what. I don't think I told her anything important that she didn't already know. I found out about the elven idea of thievery being OK if it's exchanged for something equally valuable, which makes me love them just that much more." Great, now it would be bugging me for days.

Adrian huffed. "Yeah. Those delightful old legends, always a grain of truth in them. She didn't give you anything to eat, did she?" He was being facetious, but did a doubletake at my expression. "She did? And you accepted?"

"Uh. It was just water. From the water cooler. In a paper cup thingie. I saw her draw the water- I know she didn't drop anything in. _What?" _I didn't like the _you big stupid idiot_ look Adrian was giving me, or the accompanying big stupid idiot feeling growing in my stomach. It only took a moment to realize what had happened. "Fuck. I'm going to go back to that room and find only one cup in the trash, aren't I? She distracted me with a load of bullshit for a fucking DNA sample. God, I'm _such _an idiot."

"Didn't your granny ever tell you not to eat or drink with elves?" Adrian asked, equally exasperated.

"It's not like people don't shed DNA all the damned time," I grumbled. "She just had to dust my seat after I left."

"No, that'd be stealing. You _gave_ it to her. Their damned wild magic has some pretty strict rules about permission."

I knew nothing about wild magic, but I could only conclude that I'd just blithely let Sienna Quinlan paint a bulls-eye on my back. "Won't wild magic know that I was acting in self-defense?" I asked plaintively, wondering when the next new moon was.

Adrian was still shaking his head with exasperation. "Maybe it _was_ about revenge. If so, you might get lucky — a wild magic curse always includes an escape clause. Love's first kiss to break the enchanted sleep, that kind of shit. But I think it was more about finding what makes you tick on a DNA level. You're probably a living nightmare for them."

"I don't want to be anyone's nightmare… I just want to be left alone." There I went, whining again. _Focus, Evie_. "Adrian — what's the demon escape clause?"

"Huh?"

"The elves used wild magic to curse the demons, to make witches, right? What's the escape clause for that?"

Adrian blinked in surprise. "No idea. The demons don't know. None of the elves who are alive today probably know either. I have no idea how we'd find out. It probably didn't take genetic tinkering into account, anyway."

Heh. Well, there went that option. Not that I'd have a hope in hell of figuring out what the demons themselves couldn't discover after 5000 years. "So Sienna now has my fucking DNA sample. Where would she take it? The lab here is destroyed. But then, she works for the Withons. Maybe she'll take it to the Seattle clinic? Adrian, how much do you think anyone in the Coven knew about the experiments on witches they were doing there?"

"Brooke? To be honest, she was probably nose deep in all the research. After what she tried to do to Rachel in Alcatraz, anything's possible. She probably knew about Hope, too. And now… I'm suddenly wondering where the elves got Zaebos's summoning name."

I got a sudden nasty feeling in my belly — or rather, the anxiety Adrian was kicking up in me suddenly redoubled into quease at the mention of my current second-least-favorite demon in the Ever After. (Al was still top on my shitlist.) "He's not exactly the type to be called on very often. But any demon would know it."

"But who among the elves is going to risk summoning _any_ demons? And who among the elves would even have Al's summoning name all those years ago. What if…what if it was Brooke? Or even Oliver?" Adrian slumped back onto the seat, rubbing the bridge of his nose. I flinched at his sudden movement, and worked a second charm to fight the rising anxiety. This shunning business was getting old. Adrian was still talking and I forced my brain to stop worrying that he was going to attack me and listen. "Evie, I _thought _I _knew _these people. Now Brooke's been kidnapped by demons, Mary, Amanda, and Wyatt are dead, Oliver's gone off the deep end, and Vivian's maybe missing. And I'm… fuck, what have_ I_ gone and done? I'm a fucking _demon familiar_. By _choice_."

"Not forever," I said, though the question did creep into my voice.

"No, only until this is done, then it's voluntary on my part. Supposedly," he added bitterly. "At the rate things are going, I might want to consider a permanent job there, since I'm likely to head the way of Gordian Pierce if I stick around here."

The mention of Pierce's name sent my heart racing- partly in remembered emotion, and partly for the mental image of a man being bricked into the ground alive. Surely we were beyond such barbarity these days? But my anxiety was rapidly rising off the scale again, and even though I knew it only a curse, the knowledge didn't help me fight the effects. "Adrian, we have to get this shunning taken off you. It's horrible. And it's hitting everyone, not just witches."

Adrian blinked, turning pale. "It's that bad? Damn, he went for the full strength version, then. Sorry, Evie."

"If this is what you feel whenever you're around me—"

"No, we're all protected from shit that messes with your head. Coven, I mean. I know who's shunned but I don't feel the effects."

"Oh."

"I wish I knew the curse to make you immune."

I thought of all the ways Ash liked to fuck with my head, and how nice it would be to be immune to head games. But then the sudden crash of injustice washed over me, as if a dam had broken. I was at once furious with Oliver, furious enough to do some serious damage. Whether through anger or to fight the urge to flee Adrian's presence, I leaped to my feet and started pacing. "Adrian, I've had it with that asshole. How do we break the shunning on you?"

Adrian's uneven eyebrows rose with incredulity. "We… don't?"

"Like hell we don't. I can't work with you like this. We either go back to the Ever After and have Ash camouflage this thing, or I whip up a Xanax charm to deal with it… or we bust into Coven HQ and break the fucking curse on you and Vivian. If he's attacked you because you're helping me, then fuck if I'm going to just sit around and let him get away with it. We're busting in and we're breaking this spell."

"Curse." Adrian was looking at me like I'd grown a spare head. OK, maybe I was being a little loud…not the best idea given that we were still in the FIB waiting room. "It's a curse. And you're insane."

I burst into bitter laughter, rubbing my cold, shaking hands to try to warm them. "The Coven uses curses. Why am I not surprised?" Fuck. I was sweating now. If this went on much longer, I might have a panic attack just from standing beside him.

"Shunning's a collective curse. It's one of those curses that doesn't require demon blood to invoke. We've used it for centuries. But Evie, no offense, what's that going to accomplish?"

"I'm tired of just sitting here reacting to the latest threat. And it would make me feel better," I added, knowing I sounded petulant, but unable to help it.

"I can't bring you into the inner sanctum. The Coven—"

"Adrian, surely you know that the Coven's pretty much dead now? Oliver's taken it over and booted out the last two members. If he ever goes, that's it. It's going to be obsolete soon, anyway. Because it's going to be crystal clear that witches are getting better, and word's going to get out about the witch-demon connection sooner or later anyway."

Adrian didn't reply, simply looked glumly at his hands. Even his twitchy leg had stilled. "I guess I thought we'd make Oliver see reason, Viv and I. Evie… I'm worried about her. We should have Ash send us to Seattle to check on her."

I frowned. "We don't have time for this. Vivian's a Coven-level witch; she can take care of herself." But on the other hand, what _was_ our next step?

Adrian glared back. "She's my_ friend_, Evie. She's my partner and she's about all I've got left now."

I wanted to slug him, but then realized it wasn't jealousy, it was a desire to attack first before he attacked me. Because he was biding his time, waiting for me to drop my guard. Exasperation took over, driving back the shunning-inspired paranoia. "Adrian, I'm serious about the shunning thing. It's driving me nuts just standing next to you."

"But break into the Coven? You're definitely right about your being nuts."

"You're shunned because of me. I have to do something about it."

"Not everything's about _you,_ Evie!" Adrian said, voice finally rising in exasperation. "Oliver's got it in for you and Rachel, I agree, but he's not an idiot. Shunning me because I'm working with you? That might make sense, but Viv too? Evie, it's not because of you. Stop making it about you. You're so fucking guilty about everything else, don't add me to the list!"

I took a step back, honestly shocked. I stomped on the first dozen or so defensive thoughts that popped into my head before they made it out of my mouth, but not the loud huff of indignation. "You don't have to get snippy about it. I just want to help."

"By breaking into the Coven and making things _worse_?" His face had gone an ugly shade of red, but whether it was anger or mortification I couldn't tell.

"Worse?! Honestly, Adrian, how can things get any _worse_ between you and the Coven? Oliver fucking _shunned _you! Did you think he'd just nod and smile when you came back a demon's familiar? What the hell did you think would happen?"

Bitter fury and regret flared in his eyes, and I flinched involuntarily as a real bolt of panic flared through me—enough to send me reeling a step back into come chairs, then toppling onto the floor in a clumsy heap. He reached for me and again I couldn't help the flinch and peep of fear. The fight seemed to go out of Adrian then as he hung his head again. His sudden vulnerability made him seem so young to my jaded eyes.

"Sorry," I said, embarrassed and still on the verge of a panic attack. "Just stay back a moment until I get this under control."

_What the hell's happening over there?_

I cursed and performed yet another calming charm. _Adrian's shunned._

_Seriously? That didn't take long._

…_and it's fucking with my head!_

I scowled at Ash's amusement._ Not hard to do._

Adrian ran an awkward hand through his hair. "I never thought I'd be on the receiving end of a shunning. It's awful, and I haven't even gone outside yet."

And this was the punishment the Coven had inflicted on me for imagined crimes and simple existence. I managed to take the high road and simply replied, "At least it's not triggering Therese, or you'd be in serious shit. We're taking it off of you. Ash, how do we unshun him?" I asked the question mentally as well.

_Huh? Fuck if I know. But this should help. _Blissful calm flooded my veins like cool, refreshing springwater. I enjoyed it for a moment or two before I began to wonder what kind of O-face I was making, and wiped my expression clean, rising and dusting myself off instead of basking in the glow like I wanted to.

"Breaking into the inner sanctum to undo a stupid shunning curse just seems too dangerous to me. And it doesn't help us get closer to solving our mystery," Adrian reminded me stubbornly.

I sat testily down in the chair beside him, folding my arms. "So what exactly _would_ be a good next move, in your opinion?"

"Seattle," Adrian said. "If Vivian's been shunned, she might be in danger from the locals, too. And maybe we look into the clinic and see if the contract with Zee is there, somewhere."

I failed to hide my skepticism, and I'm sure it showed on my face. "Doubt it. It'd be at the Withon's place, if it were anywhere. "

"And if it were at the Withon's place, don't you think Ellasbeth would have found it by now?"

I had to concede the point. But the clinic also seemed like a big waste of time. So did anything else I could think of. Track down Delores? Was there anything else we could learn from her? Vivian had found what we needed to know, hadn't she? But then where was Delores now? Was she in danger? Maybe she was still important. Maybe our next step was to go to Ever After and pester Newt for a sample of hair from Hope for another tracking charm. But Vivian had just been to Delores's house — surely there were plenty of DNA samples there we could use to track her. But no, I really did need to talk to Newt. Not that I wanted to be the one to tell her that Rachel was alive after all, but I had to know where I stood regarding the deal we'd made. The souls of my friends were at stake.

"Uh, Evie?" Adrian's voice was small and distracted. I glanced at him to find his attention once again riveted to his phone. A new text had come in. "Son of a bitch," he said.

_Adrian Oliver is fucking nuts. I told him about clinc and he went fucking batshit on me. It's about Brooke. I got one of the techs talking. Have recordi_

Frowning, I watched as Adrian texted her back, pacing as he did so and managing to avoid to falling over a chair or a table. I was always impressed at how folks these days could text and navigate at the same time. "Should I be as worried as I feel, or is it just the shunning paranoia kicking up again?" I asked, as we waited for a reply.

Adrian was silent for a long moment, then gasped and clapped a hand to his head in sudden apparent pain. I had to fight my own instincts to do it, but I grabbed his arm to steady him before he toppled over. "Fuck. Ow. "

Simultaneously, Ash cursed in my mind. _The hell was that?_

"That's our signal. She's in trouble. Evie, we have to help her."


	27. Consequences

**In Which Vivian Is Not Brought to the Dark Side**

Ash wasn't at all pleased by the course of the evening's events, and though he brought us back to the Ever After willingly enough, he refused to send us to Seattle just yet. Not without grilling us about everything that had happened first. Then Ash spent a few minutes glaring cross-eyed at Adrian's aura, before shaking his head in disgust. "_Witches_," was his verdict. "Can't twist a curse properly to save your lives."

"Can you undo it?" I asked, ever hopeful.

"Not without the original focusing object your Coven buddy used. What's he got on you, anyway?"

"Blood, bone and breath," Adrian said, failing to hide his sheepish expression.

This apparently made far more sense to Ash, who huffed. "_Witches_," he growled again. "Well, I'll give your leader this much, he's a tough old bird if he can cast _this_ mess single-handed. But if you'd told me this Coven of yours was a collective, I might have at least been able to hide my mind from it. Your guy probably woke up, sensed me lurking in there, and freaked out."

Adrian's eyes were wide, just before he smacked himself in the forehead.

"So Vivian knows, too? She didn't say anything," I said.

Ash shrugged. "Even with witches, male minds are more sensitive to these things. She might not have noticed."

Adrian was back to jiggling and pacing. "Can we go now?"

"Not without _me_."

"The last thing Viv and I need_ now_ is to be seen with a demon in public!" Adrian sputtered, reddening.

Ash's quelling glare at Adrian's protests left the witch uncowed and unquelled. For my part, I was a little relieved that Ash would be coming along… even if he was still stubbornly avoiding any references to my emotional revelation of a few hours ago. I was far too proud to bring it up. Anyway my current emotional turmoil was distracting enough, even if it was entirely artificial, thanks to the shunning. "You've already been seen with _me_, and everyone still thinks I'm a desperate mad bomber," I said, but amazingly, this did not cheer Adrian up. Unless a fucking miracle occurred, his life as a Coven member, Defender of the Right and Good, was over.

"We go, we grab your friend, we come back here. If she doesn't want to come, fuck her. Sun will be up soon and I've lost my faith in your ability to protect Evie," Ash growled.

"But what about investigating the clinic?"

"If it's all that important, you can come back tonight." Ash folded his arms. "Evie, you have to talk with Newt. You should probably see Al, as well, now that he's recovered—"

"What? Recovered? What happened to him?"

Ash and Adrian shared a glance. "You told me to let_ you_ tell her, man," Adrian said, voice surly. "Can we go,_ please_?"

"Wait, what?" I hated feeling in the dark, and _really_ hated the boy's club feeling Ash and Adrian were giving me right now. "Did something happen to Al when I kicked him out of my head?"

"There you go again. It's not all about _you_, Evie," Adrian snapped.

"Where are we going?" Ash asked Adrian, ignoring me.

It was a very, _very_ grumpy trio that appeared somewhere on the streets of Snoqualmie, Washington. Ash had never been there, but he knew the line that ran through it when Adrian looked it up. He took us to the closest ley line point, which happened to run right through the middle of the little Inderlander enclave in the mountains.

"I didn't know Googlemaps had that feature," I said, trying not to sound as miffed as I still felt.

"The ley line overlay?"

"No, the street view thing."

Adrian's condescending look of disbelief just made me feel all that much more out of touch with the modern world. "Evie, no offense, but have you even _been_ on the internet lately?"

"Oh, shut up. Where's the damned clinic so we can get Viv, then get out of here?"

"Assuming she's still there," Ash pointed out helpfully.

"You don't have some way to track her?" Adrian said, stopping short.

"You're the one with the fancy Coven collective curse connection to her, can't you?"

"No! Shit."

Ash snickered. "Luckily for you,_ I_ can. Though this is really going to burn your bridges with your precious Coven, Thumper," he added, more seriously. "Be honest now… is your woman worth it?"

Adrian winced and sighed something about Viv being her own woman, not his, but didn't stop Ash as the demon began to gesture and hum something under his breath. Adrian let out a peep as Ash tugged a bit of line through him, but it didn't sound like a pained peep. Quite the opposite, actually, and I gave Ash another suspicious glare. Yup, the demon was smirking. I got the distinct impression that Ash was still annoyed and fucking with both of us.

Then Adrian's eyes widened. "No, wait—" Ash grinned as Adrian swore and facepalmed again. "Seriously? Did you have to do _that_?"

Ash was grinning ear to ear. "She's that-a-way," he said cheerfully, and strode off into the slightly eerie pre-dawn light. "We'd better hurry. She's unconscious, but not dead."

"What'd he do?" I asked Adrian, as if Ash were a misbehaving puppy who'd probably pooped on the rug, _again_.

"Meet the newest member of the Coven of Moral and Ethical Standards," Ash said, turning to bow at us with a flourish. "Told you, witches can't twist curses to save their lives. They modified the damned spell and left in a security hole a mile wide. I just hacked my way in."

I just gaped at him. "Oh, wow." The thought of Oliver's spluttering, incoherent rage was… OK, maybe it was the demon in me, but I had to suppress a grin, too.

"I am _so _fucking dead," Adrian said, voice forlorn. "You won't do anything else while you're in there, will you?"

"Not unless your fearless leader tries to boot me out," Ash said, still smug as anything. "Or threatens Evie directly. Then he'll be very, _very _fucking sorry."

"I had to ask," Adrian said.

"I think we're_ both_ probably very fucking dead," I observed. "Should we warn Oliver?"

"No point. He wouldn't listen to anything I had to say now, anyway. D'ya have a spare room? Looks like I'll be moving in. I doubt I'll be welcome in reality much longer…"

"Hey! Kids! Damsel in distress, remember? C'mon, it's only a few blocks." Ash continued on his way, and we hurried to catch up. It didn't take long to reach the address Adrian had looked up, a nondescript red-bricked building on the East end of town that had once been apartments. Now it was a state-of-the-art health clinic a few miles from the main hospital. The inside had been modernized, though they'd kept the original exterior. However, as we watched, a car pulled away from the parking lot in the back. "Oops. There she goes. Shall I?"

Neither of us raised a protest when Ash raised a hand, pointed, and whispered a word of Latin that took out the car's tires with four loud pops. Three consternated elves piled out of the car, took one look at us, pulled out guns and started shooting. Ash folded his arms, tucking all of us behind his foul-looking black circle, the look on his face chilling me.

"Don't kill them," I said, grabbing his arm, as Adrian shouted a protest that we just wanted to talk, honest.

The look Ash gave me was very cold indeed. Bullets continued to _ping!_ and _zing!_ off his circle. "Why not? I need to kill _something_. I'm having a really fucking bad day."

"They're reacting to the shunning coming off Adrian," I guessed. "And that's probably what happened with Vivian, too. Please, Ash, don't make things worse. We're trying to prevent a war, not start one."

Ash growled in annoyance, a long irritated rumble. "You owe me, woman," he said. He turned to the elves, who were reloading. "All right, that's enough of that. _Calere!_"

The two shooters simultaneously yipped and dropped their guns. One landed in a damp spot on the street and turned the puddle into steam. "There's an unconscious Coven witch in your trunk, tree-huggers," Ash said, sounding bored. "Bring her out, unhurt, and I won't flay the skin off your backs."

"Real smooth, Ash," I said, as two of the elves linked hands and put the entire car behind their hastily erected circle. The third, a nebbish little guy in a lab coat, just wrung his hands and danced around in panic.

"Vivian?" Adrian called.

"She's still unconscious," Ash reported. "Feels like wild magic. You have ten seconds," he added, a bit louder, and the elves gesticulated wildly with frightened whispers.

This was going to spiral out of control very quickly. "Ash, can't you just knock them out or something?"

"And miss the look on their faces when I gut them?" he said, eyes slitted, as the nerdy elf in the lab coat pulled out a cell phone, jabbing at it in a blind panic. "What an idiot."

Yeah… they were breaking the three rules of facing off against a demon. The first rule was _Don't_, but the second rule was _Make sure you have an airtight circle_, and the third? _Turn off your damned cell phone first._ Ash didn't need to do anything other than walk over to the car and poke a finger into the bubble, plucking the cell phone from Elf #3's unresisting hand. Then, ignoring the shrieks of fear, he knocked out the other two with a curse, snagged the third by his pale cobwebby hair, grasped the handle of the trunk, and ripped the entire sheet of metal off of the car like opening a sardine can. Vivian's limp body was indeed in there, though she didn't otherwise look hurt.

"He's handy to have along, I admit," Adrian said, staring in admiration. I had to agree.

"Break the spell," Ash growled, as the remaining elf whimpered and twisted in his grip. Ash helpfully oriented the elf's face toward the sleeping witch in the trunk to make his meaning crystal clear. "Go on, before I get any more impatient with this whole idiotic business."

"Can't. Calhoun cast it. I don't know any magic; I'm just a tech. Please, I only work here," the elf whined, cringing.

"Where were you taking her?" I asked, checking on the two downed elves and finding them unharmed, just out cold.

"I don't know!"

"Why'd you knock her out?"

"I don't know! Ow, ow-ow-ow!"

Ash rolled his eyes, making a grumpy growl of frustration. The elf's eyes rolled up, too, as Ash gave him a mental whammy and sent him off to Dreamland with the others. Ash released the man and wiped his hands on his pants in disgust. "Try the kiss thing on her, witch. Half of those damned wild magic sleeps can be broken by a kiss from a lover. I need her permission to jump her. Rules and all that shit. Hurry, the sun will be up soon."

"Lover?" I asked, as Arian flushed pink and spluttered.

"Long time ago," he said, ducking his head. "How the hell did you know?"

Ash snorted. "It's in your head, every time you look at her. Still carrying a bit of a torch for this one, Thumper?"

"Fuck you," Adrian said, red all the way over his ears and down his neck, now. He bent and brushed his lips over Vivian's, whispering something into her ear.

Just when I was about to conclude it hadn't worked, Vivian began to stir. She blinked at Adrian, then her surroundings, in bewilderment. "Adrian? Why am I in a trunk?" Her eyes widened in alarm when she saw Ash and I watching her. "_You two_?"

"Viv…" Adrian was clearly searching for the best way to bring her up to speed. "Things are really bad. Do you trust me?"

Still disoriented, Vivian gave Adrian a searching, confused look. "Of course I do, why wouldn't—" Her eyes widened. "Adrian? What did they do to you?"

"It's a long story. But you have to pick a side, right now. Oliver shunned us both — are you going to stick with him? Or are you with me?"

"What's going on, Adrian?" she demanded, glaring at Ash. "Back off, demon," she said warningly.

Ash made another grumpy noise, but I grabbed his arm and pulled him away as Adrian tried his best to answer her question. "Thank you," I said.

"I don't like this," Ash replied, expression distant. "There's just too much going on for us to be wasting time here with witches. The experiment with Adrian was a failure. I should cut him loose. And you need to talk to Newt."

"Why? What's happened now?"

"Hope's dying."

"What? No! Why?"

"Newt doesn't know. Dali doesn't have any idea either. They thought that Hope just had the same issues as Newt, missing pieces of her soul. Souls can regenerate, to a point. But it's a different problem. It's like part of her soul is still lost in the lines, insane as that possibility is, and it's siphoning off what soul she has left."

I wasn't sure what to say. It just wasn't fair. It was so fucking unfair, and there was nobody to blame for it. "Is there any hope? Any at all?"

"Not that Dali can see. She's got a month or two at this rate, and for half of that she'll likely be insane or in a coma."

"How… how is Newt taking it?"

"Not well." There was a lot behind those words. "Newt's had the court date to clear the ownership dispute moved up to next week. She wants to ensure you're going to hold up your end of the deal."

"Of course…" Did she even remember which deal? Did she remember Rachel was supposed to be dead? I wasn't looking forward to being the one to tell her Rachel was alive. I rubbed my eyes, feeling tired and hopeless all over again. What did all this matter now? "So if Hope's no longer an option for escaping the Ever After, is Zee still going to fulfill his threat if he doesn't get her? Is all of this pointless now?"

"Don't bet on it. Zee's a vindictive little shit." Ash smiled mirthlessly, showing his perfect teeth. "We all are."

We both looked up as Vivian gave Adrian a loud smack across the face. "You idiot!" she said, though there were tears on her face. "I can't believe you'd go and do something so stupid!"

Adrian shrugged, hands in his pockets. "I just… felt so helpless. After Mary… I couldn't save her. You saw what that thing did to her. I-I had to do _something_. I know you don't understand…"

"No, I _do_ understand, I just think you're a _moron_!" Her flushed face turned toward me, and she glared daggers. "This is_ your_ fault," she said angrily.

Of course it was.

This time, I found my feet marching over to the witch, still sitting on the edge of the trunk, three unconscious elves still sprawled at her feet. "I've had it," I said. "I've fucking had it with you people blaming me for everything! You know whose fault this is? _Yours._ The elves stunted us thousands of years ago. It's the Coven who's _kept_ us stunted all this time. The Coven kept us weak when more potent magic might have saved hundreds of us during the Turn. Rosewood's killing more of us than ever. The elves cured us, but it's the fucking Coven who's _suppressed _the cure!"

"Black magic is addictive and dangerous," Vivian protested.

"It's ALL dangerous! How many people have you killed with your white spells, Vivian? Curses can build and heal, just as easily as white magic can destroy and kill. _There's no difference_."

"The smut—"

"The cost is paid by the caster, instead of drawing the life-force from the earth or another creature. More honest, if you ask me." Ash had weighed in, though his tone was bored.

"We've heard all this before," she said angrily, color high.

"Of course you have," Ash said. "We've been saying it for thousands of years. Nobody's listening."

"Who are you to talk?" she shot back. "You and your kind enslave witches every chance you get! YOU don't pay the price, your familiars do!"

Ash shrugged. "Witches betrayed us. Fell prey to elven lies. We owe you nothing." He bent forward, smiling sweetly. "And I could enslave you easily enough right now, love. But I haven't, have I?"

"Guys!" Adrian shouted. "Hey! Sunrise, y'know? We don't have time for this. Vivian… come with us."

"No."

"We could have just left you asleep and taken you with us, you know," I said, trying not to let my own anger get the better of me. I didn't _dislike_ Vivian, just the organization she represented.

"Demons can't jump someone without permission," she said.

"They _don't_," I said. "Not _can't_. There's a difference. The point is, we didn't just kidnap you—"

"You're wasting your breath, Evie." Ash took my arm and steered me away, gearing up to take us back. Adrian looked between us, clearly torn. "You coming, Thumper?" Ash said, voice impatient.

"But…" Adrian looked helplessly between us. Then he slouched, crestfallen. "OK. OK, Viv. Just… think about what I said, will you? And don't hate me?"

Vivian softened just a little, though she tried not to let it show. Apparently Adrian's puppy-dog eyes worked on her just as well as they did on me. "Adrian, you're an idiot, but I don't hate you."

"Are you sure you won't come with us and help us? Please?"

"You seriously think I am going to trust these two?" she said, incredulous.

"I'm just asking you to trust _me_," Adrian said.

"You let a demon into our collective, Adrian. No matter how good your intentions are… Adrian, you just betrayed everything we stand for. Don't you see that? Oliver will never forgive it."

Adrian winced as if she'd struck him. "Maybe… maybe that's OK. Oliver can't suppress Rosewood forever. Evie's living proof of that. Demons are coming back. There's nothing he can do to stop it, and if he keeps trying… no, I can't be involved in genocide."

"Genocide?!" Vivian looked appalled. "Isn't that what we're trying to prevent?"

"I'm not sure. But look at what we've done to Yvette, Viv. Oliver would happily kill her, and Rachel, and Hope, and anyone else like her. You know that. We _both_ supported that. What does that make us?" Vivian's mouth opened and closed, but she didn't reply. "Yeah, Rachel and Lee are products of elven tinkering, but Evie's the real deal, Viv. She wasn't created or saved, she just happened. And the next demon that just happens… are we going to kill them, too? How many others are out there? She's right, there's more and more Rosewood cases every year. Are we going to bury them all?"

Vivian's face was flushed, but she still had no reply.

"So OK, we'll go, but think about why you were shunned—" Adrian blinked. "Hey. Why were_ you_ shunned, anyway?"

Vivian looked at her hands, twisting on her lap. Her fingers were trembling. "Brooke… she left notes. Oliver knew about this clinic. He knew about Hope already. Brooke was there, when they made the deal. Oliver's already destroyed everything Brooke left behind. The only one left who knows the exact details of the deal is Brooke herself."

"Oh. _ Goody_," I said, thinking how much fun it was going to be to have to pester Dali for a chance to talk to her.

Vivian gave me a sour look, but continued. "I got one of the techs talking," she said, looking down at hapless Elf #3, still sprawled at her feet. "He thought… I knew all about it already." She fished in her pocket and handed Adrian something — one of his recording amulets. "He left and I called Oliver and… I told him we should ask you to help, to talk to Brooke. He accused me of treason, corruption, being in on Brooke's research and wanting it to continue, that Adrian was a traitor, too, that demonic influences were taking over the country… he's totally nuts. Then I guess the elves freaked out when the shunning hit. Or they overheard me talking and thought I was going to tell someone everything about what was going on, including the genetic research. I was in the middle of texting you, then I heard singing and… then I woke up here." She sighed, suddenly heavy with sadness. "Oliver knew everything. He knew Hope would vanish when Ellasbeth had her baby, so he didn't care, and then when the accident happened—"

"He blamed me for it, so nobody would look into it too deeply," I said, after the silence that followed this revelation. "Kill two demons with one stone."

Vivian nodded. "Now he says… don't interfere. The elves and the demons should kill each other off. Solve… solve all our problems."

"That's it. He's going down." It was Therese talking, not me.

"He's not worth it, Evie," Ash said, giving me an affectionate squeeze that managed to tame Therese's anger. "I owe him a beer for this little shot of schadenfreude."

Vivian shot him another dirty look, but it was half-hearted. Then she glanced at Adrian, who was not touching Vivian, but clearly desperate to connect. "Viv, please come with us."

"No."

"I'm supposed to just _leave_ you here? You're shunned, look at your car… where will you go? You can't go back to Oliver, you can't go back home."

Vivian shook her head, every vestige of the confident young woman gone, but still sticking to the one set of ideals she'd ever known. "No, Adrian. I… I can't."

"Viv, I can't just leave you here."

"Witch!" Ash growled, reaching the end of his patience. "Are you breaking the deal?"

"Ash, can't you see he's—"

"He's holding us up, is what I see. Pick a side, witch. Either stand by your decision or get the hell out."

"I can't… just _leave_ her." Adrian couldn't meet my eyes, and I finally understood something about him. He really was young, really was idealistic, but now that he was faced with the real consequences of his choices, he was starting to buckle. Oliver was a pompous windbag, easy to despise… but Vivian was his peer, and he wasn't budging her, and now he was losing his confidence in his decisions.

"You can, and you will, or I will cut you loose and you'll have nothing."

I blinked at Ash's ultimatum. "Aren't you being a bit hard on him, Ash?"

Ash chuckled. "Letting him live, knowing what he knows, is being _hard_ on him?"

Adrian's face was white and desperate. "But… what about… teaching me…?"

"I won't tolerate divided loyalties, and certainly not loyalties divided by misplaced sentiment over another stubborn, misguided woman."

"Wait, you'd… just let him go? He wouldn't be your familiar anymore?" Vivian was white-faced and stunned. "You'll kill three elves, just like that, but then let him go?"

"Against my better judgment," Ash growled.

"And they're not dead," I said. Vivian's glance went down to the elves, who hadn't stirred once, but were clearly breathing easily.

"Sun's rising, Evie," Ash said.

"Adrian, what are you waiting for? Tell him to let you go!" Vivian shook Adrian's arm, but the witch didn't respond.

"Adrian, I…" I felt absolutely wretched, but I didn't know why. This wasn't turning out at all like what I'd expected, but on the other hand, Adrian had dug his own hole and jumped right into it. Now if he wanted to try to crawl back out, I wasn't going to stop him. "Thanks for helping. I'll see if I can track down Delores, when this is all over… she deserves to know the truth." I leaned into the curl of Ash's arm, and he pulled me close again.

"Wait, Sinclaire." Vivian had slid off the car to her feet. She paused, put a hand on Adrian's shoulder. He wasn't looking at any of us, eyes distant. "Delores, she…" She had to swallow before the words would come. "After the accident, she called the Coven."

Her voice caught, so I filled in. "Makes sense. She figured out that elves stole her babies, and then her daughter dies in an explosion not even a day after being found. She must have thought she'd stumbled onto something huge. So go to the top and tell them something terrible and tragic is going down. It's what I'd do. Assuming I'd never met you all, that is," I added uncharitably. "So what did you guys tell her? Sorry? You're on your own?"

Vivian couldn't seem to say the rest, and a chill fell over me. Delores hadn't been seen since the accident. And we knew she hadn't perished in the lab. And she hadn't gone to the FIB, or the IS, or the press…

Ash said it for her. "She knew too much. You killed her to protect your big secret, didn't you?"

Adrian and Vivian looked at each other miserably, and Vivian didn't deny it. "No. Fucking hell," said Adrian. "How long did you know?"

"When Oliver told me ten minutes ago," Vivian said. "He and Wyatt…" Her hand rose, then fell limply by her side. "Wyatt was supposed to go clean out her house, but then… Ku'Sox."

"And it looks like you were about to be disappeared too," Ash said. A cruel smile twisted his lips again. "So tell me, sweetheart. You've been betrayed by those you trusted, shunned for something you didn't do, are covering up the murder of an innocent woman, and were about to be silenced for knowing too much. How's it feel? Just? Right?" He inhaled, appreciating the moment like a connoisseur savoring a fine wine. "Ah, yes, I definitely owe Oliver a drink for this _masterful_ bit of poetic justice."

_Aaaaash… _My mental voice was chiding,though part of me was feeling a similar appreciation, under the profound sympathy I was feeling for Vivian.

_Can't help it. I'm the evil one here, remember? I get to gloat. It's expected._

Adrian was staring at Vivian like he'd never seen her before. "Tell me… would you have gone along with it, if you'd been there instead of Wyatt?"

Vivian's eyes sparkled with tears. "I—I don't know."

Adrian shook his head, looking disgusted. "I would've. Two weeks ago, I'd have gone along with it. Now I'd rather die than go back to that, Viv. This whole 'ends justify the means' thing has to stop. I'm going to learn demon magic, and I'm going to bring Oliver down. Tell you what." He leaned in and brushed his lips over her cheek. Her tears spilled over at the touch, but she didn't pull away. "Tell Oliver I said that. Tell him everything I've said and done. He'll take you back." He turned away from Vivian. "Tell him the demonic influence is entirely my doing. He'll believe you, once you tell him what I did. He'll rescind the shunning and take you back."

"Adrian…" Vivian reached toward him, but he was already walking away, eyes haunted, expression devastated. "Please don't do this."

"Let's go," Adrian said. "Good luck, Viv."

Ash's eyes were slitted with something like satisfaction, but he had the grace to keep his mouth shut this time. He took the witch's arm, pulled me close, and the world melted away.


	28. Back Into The Woods

_Simply reading the reviews for Ever After is firing up my imagination. I can't help but admit that APB didn't really get me all that excited, but EA promises to be sensational! (So I'm trying to get in as much of this story as I can before hand…or I'll be too tempted to include EA events!)_

_As always, I am so totally grateful for your comments, and once again thank my beta reader Deus3xMachina for all her great comments and insights! _

**In Which Mischief is Plotted, and Memories Are Vinylized**

Adrian didn't say a word as we rematerialized in Ash's lab. His expression was still shattered and hopeless. Ash went immediately to his calling mirror to give Newt a ring, eyes closed in concentration. The silence became deafening.

I watched as Adrian listlessly toyed with one of Ash's ley-line doo-dads. I wanted to say something, anything, but my record for being any kind of comfort, let alone saying the right thing, in a time of emotional crisis was pretty lousy. "Does it ever get easier?" Adrian asked finally, looking at me with sad eyes. "Losing everything? Having the world fear you and hate you? Does it ever get easier?"

I was about to reply, when Ash said quietly, "No. It doesn't."

"Ash," I said, but realized he was right. It didn't. But I did have my own unique insight to add. "It's strange, but… I found it was easier to bear when I knew I had only myself to blame. This latest round… it's the injustice that's eating at me the most. Before, I could just hunker down in my guilt and bear it, but this is worse."

Ash looked bemused, but Adrian just humphed. "So fucking Oliver knew everything, and didn't tell me. Fucking Oliver kicked us out to protect the 'Great Witch Secret.' Brooke helped the elves make a deal with a demon to trade a demon girl for an elven cure. So much for our great and noble traditions." He took the amulet Vivian had given him and scowled at it. Was there any point in listening to it now? Adrian's thoughts were probably similar, because he asked, "Is that where we're going next? To talk to Brooke? Can we?"

"Newt first," said Ash. "Then Brooke. You can't come to either meeting, Thumper. I can't vouch for your safety around Newt, given the mood she's in now. And it's demons only at Dalliance, no familiars allowed. Here. This'll keep you busy."

Ash selected a book off the shelf and tossed it to the witch, who caught it and turned it upright. Despite Adrian's unhappy expression, his eyes gleamed at the title. _Collective_, it read.

"Your guy's a hack. He can't boot you out of the Coven collective now, not without your physical presence. Find out what else you can do with your bond. Give vengeance a try."

"No," Adrian said. "I don't want vengeance."

"Son, you have years to go before you can lie effectively to anyone but yourself. You're talking to a professional. Take a look. Give him insomnia. A spook only he can see. A burning desire for his brother and a limp dick for a month or two."

I chuckled. "Hell, even_ I'm_ tempted, now…"

Adrian made another grumpy sound, but he was hiding a smile. "All right, I do want to know more. But no stupid petty vengeance. I'm not twelve anymore."

"Of course not," Ash said, winking at me. "We'll go for something more…"

"…subtle and poetic," Adrian agreed, flipping open the book. "There's no table of contents," he complained.

"Don't skip ahead," Ash advised, smiling benevolently, as if he hadn't just given Adrian the keys to the candy store _and_ the fireworks display. "With luck, we might be back… ever again. Have fun, Thumper."

"Wait, what?" Adrian said, but we were already misting away.

_That was pretty nice of you._ I was actually kind of proud of my demon, for once.

_He picked me over her. Such idiocy deserves a reward._ Ash sent me the equivalent of a shrug, but I sensed his pleasure that I'd noticed. _I'm far more of an expert in sticks than carrots, when it comes to training familiars, but… his enthusiasm this way is rather remarkable._

_He's an apprentice, not a familiar… right?_

_Potato, Po-tah-to._

Newt's place hadn't changed much, apart from looking even more austere than ever. Newt wasn't one to collect _objects d'art_ and live in luxury, and now even her decorative demon helper was missing. The place looked vaguely Japanese, with low lacquered wooden tables and mats, and plastered stone walls with delicate sweeping nature scene murals that had faded badly over time, leaving only faint sage leaves over a dingy wash of ivory. Shelves held a collection of decorative bottles and books, including the Bottle of Red I'd given her a few days before. The scene positively reeked of burnt amber and spent curses, of faded dreams and ancient incense. I shivered as Newt coalesced before us, her clothing a deep, lush garnet. It was more feminine than anything I'd ever seen her wear.

_Red_, Ash informed me_. She's already mourning. This is bad, Evie. Whatever you do, don't provoke her._

_How the hell do I know what will provoke her?_ I shot back, nodding at Newt nervously.

_Well, for one thing, you could keep talking about me behind my back_, Newt said into both of our heads, mental voice irritated, and Ash and I both flinched.

"Sorry," I said, as Ash cleared his throat. "Um… how are you?"

"Swell," Newt replied.

"And, um, Hope?"

"Dying," Newt replied. "How're you?"

"Uh… could be better…" I replied. "We found out a bit more about Delores."

"Who?"

"Hope's birth mother," Ash clarified. "We'll shortly know the details of Zaebos's contract with the Withons, in time for your court case."

"Oh. Great," Newt said. I looked at her more closely, deciding that she really was missing her usual cynical spark. "Not that it will matter, in the end. And you? You've allowed Ash in, I see. It's a temporary reprieve. You're in a tough bind, I'll give you that. Bond with him, and it might damage your mind, and then you're dead. Don't bond with him, and one day you'll kill him — then you're dead as well." She winked at me. "So do try to control your temper. If you can."

"Yeah… will do…" I looked at Ash for guidance. He made a get-on-with-it gesture with his head. "Newt, is our deal still on? We had, like, three deals going at once. The first was you and Dali sort of acting as mentors in my training. Is that still happening?"

Newt cackled. "Try training you in the usual way, and we might end up nuking the Ever After earlier than scheduled. No, you'll not be trained in the usual way. I don't know how we'll train you, at this point. You're down to your last life, little kitty."

I frowned, determined not to let her provoke me, either. "Ok, how about the second deal? I assume that one's still on, since Ash told me you're expecting to see me in court next week."

Newt nodded. "There's a third deal?" she asked.

"Yeah, when Rachel, uh, died. You told me to buy her mark off of Al in exchange for protecting the souls of my four friends from Ash. Turns out Ash isn't that mad, and Rachel… isn't that dead."

"Really." Newt sniffed the air, cocking her head. "You sure about that? She's not in the collective."

"I've apparently talked to her. Al said she cursed my memory so I'd forget about it."

Newt regarded me coolly, creeping me out with her black-on-black gaze. But when the old Newt might have exploded in anger, this Newt was emotionless and unflappable. Then I realized she'd rifled through my recent memories, but so softly that I'd only noticed when Ash moved within my mind as well, interposing himself between us. I swallowed, wishing I could install some kind of electric fence in there to zap interlopers, because this mind-reading thing was getting irksome. "She's hiding from us?"

"From Al, I think," I said.

Newt threw her head back and laughed. "Awwwwww," she drawled. "Poor little Gally. He's had _such_ a rough day. Abandoned by both his lovers, alienating his only other ally. No wonder he's still hiding under his covers."

_Both his lovers?_ I asked Ash, confused.

_Tell you later_, Ash replied hastily, which only kindled my curiosity.

"So I have the four souls you seek," Newt said, glancing at the shelf with the Bottle of Red. "I was wondering why I had those sitting out."

"Yeah. Could… could I have Red back? And… and the others, if you'll give them to me?" I wasn't hopeful, but there was no harm in asking. Newt already knew they were important to me.

Newt regarded me for a long time, before she walked over and handed me the squat, square bottle that housed Red's immortal soul. "I do remember giving this one to you. As for the others, I have little use for them, not now. Ensure Zaebos doesn't steal my Hope away, and I'll give you the other three."

_Not now...?_ "If I can find out the exact wording of the contract between Zaebos and the Withons, I might be able to find a loophole or something. But I'm going to need to talk to Brooke."

"Brooke?"

"Dali's head waitress," Ash clarified. "Coven witch Al snagged a few years back?"

Newt grunted. "Good luck with _that._ Though you might catch him in a good mood, thanks to Rachel's new tulpa. Dalliance has never been busier." She gave me a narrow look. "You ever made a tulpa? No, of course you haven't. He'll want one. I'd better come with you, talk you through it. Perhaps I'll bring Hope along. She's never been to Dalliance."

"Huh? I can't make a tulpa! I can't afford to pass out for t_hree days_, not now!"

"Oh, pish. Just make a little one. Rachel had to go and show off by filling up the collective. You don't have to prove yourself. Just make a tiny one. Knock you on your ass for an hour or two, at the most."

"Newt… are you sure that's a good idea, given her state of mind?" Ash asked, putting an arm around my shoulders. "Might it not… damage her?"

Newt's grin had far too many teeth in it. "Maybe. Probably not. She'll be useless to us if she can't do it, though."

Ash frowned. "She_ won't_ be procreating. We discussed this."

"Woah, woah, _woah! _Say what?"

"She might, someday," Newt said. "Any practice is good. Start small. Build up to it."

"No. We're not forming the mate bond, Newt. But…" he eyed me narrowly, weighing and measuring. "But it would be worth trying a tulpa, I agree. Dali will demand it, in any case. Shall we do a little one, right now?"

"Ash! What the hell does making a tulpa have to do with procreation? I'm not getting naked in front of anyone…"

Newt laughed. "Sure you will. You'll be baring your psyche to him, and to me. You don't get much more naked than that."

"I don't think I like this idea," I protested, as Newt vanished in a showy little cloud of red smoky tendrils, presumably off to fetch Hope. "I didn't expect her to come with us."

Ash shrugged. "She's got her mind set on keeping Hope for herself. She'll lean on Dali for you. It's good that you have her on your side."

_Good._ Right. As long as it lasted. As long as I had a hope in hell of saving the girl. As long as the girl still lived. Knowing my luck, Newt would find a way to blame me for Hope's demise, too. Elven spells and Coven threats I could handle, but Newt and her unpredictability still made me twitchy.

When Newt reappeared with Hope in tow, she was dressed in her usual flowing black robes, obsidian staff in hand. Hope, too, was dressed in similar robes, the fabric a beautiful, rich forest green that complimented her pale complexion and dark hair. She didn't look like a dying woman. In fact, Hope looked lovely, and content, if still a bit sad.

Resigned. Hope seemed resigned to whatever fate awaited her. While she didn't seem frightened of Newt, it might also have been that she wasn't feeling much of anything. Did she know she was dying?

"Hope, we've discussed making tulpas before," Newt said, and I realized this was going to be a lesson for both of us. Swell. Hope just nodded, eyes wide and interested. "Yvette Therese Sinclaire is going to try one, and then I'd like you to have a go. Ash will pull it from you—"

"Woah!" This time it was Ash who protested. "Like hell I am! Evie, sure, but… I… aah…" I was amused to see Ash wilting under Newt's glare, now.

"You're the only man apart from Al that I might entrust with this task," she said, eyes boring into him. "And it's not because of your paltry mental skills. I don't think I need to tell you that Yvette will kill you if you dive too deep."

"A-all right," he said meekly. "Bitch," he added under his breath, after Newt had turned away.

Trembling with trepidation, I sat next to Ash, and Newt circled behind me, placing a cool, gentle hand on my temple. "Close your eyes," she instructed, and I felt her take hold of my psyche's hand and lead it along somewhere. It was a trippy sensation, but Ash was right there beside me, his body warming my side even as his mind circled around mine. Newt had apparently booted out the rest of the demons out of the collective, but she'd brought Hope along for the ride. The four of us floated in the vast, echoing darkness that wasn't really space at all, for all that my mind filled it with stars.

"Dali will want a new locale for his restaurant," she instructed. "We'll start small. Think of some place that you know intimately… your room as a child, perhaps, or a favorite garden for your meditation."

My mind immediately jumped to the clearing where I'd met Ash, that one magical summer before everything went wrong. It was perfect — there was no place in the world I knew better, no place in the world that was more a part of my memory, of myself. There was no place in the world I had spent so much time in, in or out of my nightmares, no place in the world that had meant quite so much to me on every level. If there was one location I could make real, it was this quiet spot in the woods where I'd spent the summer with my friends.

Ash, of course, groaned. "Not_ that_ one," he said, but Newt hushed him.

"Well done," she said. "Go back there, Yvette. Bring to mind every small detail…"

She continued giving me mental instructions, guiding the imminent magic, but my conscious mind had already tuned her out in a rush of memory, as I sank into the complex mire of emotion that was the fateful clearing in the woods. The scent of pine and green, the trill of night-calling birds and insects, the crackle of the camp fire… the bubbling of the spell pot, the feel of the pen as I scratched words on paper that may not have been profound, but carried all the trembling hopes and dreams and desires of a sixteen-year-old girl, the smell of the brimstone as my friends indulged… the taste and resonance of my ley line, the exhilarating rush of Ash teaching me new ways to manipulate the energy, the fear and yearning and self-recrimination of a young girl's first inappropriate crush and the impossibility of suppressing it totally… the snap of pine branches on my face as I fled for my life, the rush of terror upon realizing I was trapped, the horror mingled with relief when the sun rose and I found myself alive, if not unharmed… the quiet acceptance and grief of my first return, and the mingled hope and joy of my second return where we'd experienced the brief, brilliant connection between two souls — before before my crippling self-doubt and paranoid suspicion put an end to it.

All of it, the entire summation of the defining features of my life, all of it was poured into the creation of the tulpa — and I hardly even noticed I was drawing on Ash for the energy to create this, filling the space, imbuing it with life and fear and love.

"Stop now, little demon," Newt said quietly, finally bringing me back to myself. "Open your eyes and see what you've created."

It was there, all of it. It was a forest glade in the moonlight, but it was more. It held the primal emotions of the forest — fear, passion, destruction… but there was also a sense of the liminal state of life and death, of hope and despair, of dream and reality. It was pain, a wound finally on the verge of healing. It was possibility, held just at the moment of change, whether that change be destruction or creation. It was everything I'd ever tried to write as poetry. Then, I'd failed miserably, but it had always been within me, yearning to find a voice.

It was beautiful. And it was _mine_.

"She poured too much of herself into it," Newt said, as I gazed wide-eyed at my creation. She didn't seem nearly as impressed. "Pull her out, Ashmedai, before she loses herself entirely."

I didn't want to leave, but Ash was merciless, and it was fortunate that he knew me so well. I felt nothing of his thoughts as he entered my mind, lifting here, cutting there, pulling out tendrils of emotion and memory and connections with the care of a lover, but I could feel his emotions spilling over. There was a lot of frustrated anger, trepidation, which faded as he worked, until all I got was a grim acceptance. For the first time he could see exactly how his actions had shaped and honed and damaged me, and how all the wounds had healed over and scarred. And he saw the beauty of them, as well —at least, that's how I interpreted the very last slip of feeling he let me see, before he closed himself off to me once more. If he cared for me at all, this must have been a painful task for him, yet he slowed down near the end of his task, as if reluctant to leave it.

"_Memoranda_," he said finally, his voice a whisper, and the connection was broken. I began to cry, even though in the end I had lost nothing from the experience. It had just been so moving, and life-affirming, to know that I had such beauty in me. I wanted to do it again, to see what else I had inside.

Newt chuckled, and I felt her hand smoothing my hair. "Dear child," she said fondly. "Yes, you've made a wonder. But you must not always give so freely of your soul, or you're likely to lose it."

Her words were like a bucket of water, and I snapped out of my triumphant, deliriously happy mood instantly — to discover that I was trembling in a cold sweat, nauseated, and that my aura felt like it was moth-eaten and fragile. The trembling turned to shaking, and Ash made an irritated noise. "She overdid it, didn't she?" he asked.

"She picked a most poignant memory," Newt replied. "But it's small, confined to this clearing and a little ways beyond. She'll feel queasy and helpless for an hour or so." She sounded a little distracted, peering around the tulpa like there was something she wasn't quite sure of, lurking around the corner. "If I didn't know any better…" she said.

"Hmm?" I wiped the tears from my face, and Ash drew me into his lap like a child. I snuggled into him, seeking his warmth. I did feel queasy and helpless, but I also felt cleansed and totally at peace with the world. _Look at what we made!_

Ash didn't reply. He was stiff with discomfort at my warm fuzzies in front of Newt, but the mark on my chest pulsed with pleasure.

"Nothing, it's just…" she turned and gave me a penetrating look, blinking at my obvious affection and then shaking her head with what might have been a roll of her eyes, it was hard to tell. "I don't believe this is entirely yours."

"Of course it is," Ash said, snorting. "Whose else could it be, _yours_? I watched — you weren't helping."

"I wonder…" She lifted a branch, for all the world like she was peeking under the skirt of a tablecloth. She humphed and dropped it. "It was just a fleeting feeling, but I think she may have caught some of your memories in here, Ashmedai. Only a few. Odd. I've never heard of that, before. Perhaps it's your bond."

"But we're not bound — well, not that way," I said.

"He's deep in your mind, love. I wouldn't worry. Just ensure that you remove all of her from any tulpa you create together, and you'll be fine." She took one last look around, satisfied. Then, the world around us shimmered and distorted madly, folding in on itself until it had compressed itself into a little disk in Newt's hand. She handed it to me, and it took my brain a moment to process what it was: an old-fashioned 45 record, shiny and new.

"What the heck is that?" asked Hope.

"Back in my day," I said, affecting a voice tremulous with age, "we had these things called records…"

Hope favored me with a condescending teenager stare. "I _know _what a _record_ is," she said loftily. "I don't know why Newt turned the _tulpa_ into a _record_."

"In case she wants to sell it to Dali," Newt replied. "It's a new memory, for all that it's nighttime within. He might want it. Feeling better?" she asked me.

"Not yet," I said, still feeling like I might throw up. "Ash, I'd like to lie down." Ash obliged, settling himself on the floor beside me so my head was in his lap. He was being awfully affectionate, I thought suspiciously, but his face was, as ever, blank of any telltale softer emotions. For all I knew, I'd just given him the thrill — or the guilt-trip — of a lifetime. Or perhaps he was feeling proud of his woman, who'd just proven again that she could sling demon magic with the best of them. For my part, I wanted to sleep for a few days. I felt like I'd just run an emotional marathon, like I'd purged myself of years and years of pent-up… something. I couldn't even label the morass of emotions that were connected to that clearing, but they weren't all bad. In fact, now that I was no longer afraid of Ash, even the terror of that night had lost its sting. Mostly there was guilt, and sadness, and all the unspoiled wonder of all the times that had come before the Big Reveal of Ash as a Monster… and I no longer thought of Ash as a monster. Ash… what he was to me defied categorization too.

Ash was my demon.

Probably I was the same thing to him… something that defied categorization.

"Your turn," News said, looking at Hope. "Pick a very, very clear memory…" And now we were back in the empty, vast collective.

But Hope, it seemed, was simply incapable of making a tulpa. Finding the memory wasn't the problem, nor was sustaining it. She was tapping a line through Newt, I noted with a little pang of foreboding, but it wasn't getting her anywhere.

"The Falls," she said, describing what she saw in her mind. "I'm sitting in the grass, in my favorite spot, and the falls are rushing endlessly on, hissing and churning and falling hundreds of feet, crashing on the rocks far below. The wind is fresh, clean, and in the twilight, I'm watching the lights of the lodge coming on one by one—"

Newt shifted, her mind encircling the girl curiously. "Keep talking," she said, but she sounded stymied.

Hope continued, describing her perch by a waterfall, presumably near her hometown. She talked about rafting on the river below, about fishing, about hiking for hours in these woods with her adopted family. Newt circled her, occasionally dipped into her mind, but it was clear that Hope simply couldn't do it like Newt wanted.

It went on for a long time, perhaps half an hour, as Newt poked and prodded and Hope grew more and more frustrated. Ash said nothing, lost in his own thoughts — which he'd taken pains to cloak from us. It was dangerous to do a lot of talking or loud thinking in the collective, where our souls were open and bare to those paying attention. Newt had tossed the others out, but I could sense them, peeking in through the windows. I wasn't thinking of much at all, feeling my strength and emotional fortitude slowly rebuilding itself. I felt cleansed, almost peaceful, as if I'd finally divested myself of a heavy anchor I'd been lugging all my life. Maybe it had simply been letting Ash see into me, see everything he'd done, without trying to protect him from the consequences of his actions. Perhaps someday he'd do the same for me — and it wouldn't be comfortable, I knew that now. Newt was right, some part of him had been swept up into my tulpa, where I'd seen and felt it and held it inside my… well…wherever a demon woman made the tulpas. It wasn't really related to procreation, was it…? I couldn't for the life of me see _how_.

_Ash… what would happen if a demon woman made a tulpa and didn't have a demon man to pull it from her?_

_No idea, love. Ask Dali, if you think of it._

_Ash…that night you took me back there, the night you told me about the venom…_

_Hush, Evie. _

_What you said…were you-_

_Not here, Evie._

I'd been wanting to discuss that whole thing for some time now, but Ash was, as ever, not interested in discussing the emotional aspects of our relationship. But at least he was still _satisfied_, I supposed. He wouldn't be here if he weren't. Right? Stung, despite trying not to take it personally, I returned my attention to Hope. The girl was in tears by the time Newt let her give up, a very grave look on the older woman's face indeed. "Odd," was her only comment, as Hope sobbed in frustration and fear.

"What's wrong with me?" she demanded, hastily wiping her eyes on the beautifully embroidered sleeve of her robe. "Why can't I do it? I've been able to do everything else you've taught me!"

"Another missing piece to the puzzle," said Newt, but there was a weary note of sadness under her placid expression as she regarded her protégée. "Apparently… I missed that one. Not to worry, child. You don't need that talent. You certainly won't be procreating any time soon, either."

_Look at us,_ I thought, gaze wandering over Newt and Hope. _One insane, one damaged, one dying. It looks like Rachel really is demonkind's last hope after all._

Newt fixed me with a stubborn look. "I'll outlive you all," she growled. "Let's go have a chat with Dali."


	29. Out To Lunch

**In Which Evie Encounters Yet Another Ultimatum**

We made quite a stir when we appeared outside Dalliance. Conversation stopped, heads turned, and whispers flew. But I was too busy shading my eyes from the sudden, unexpected 1.21-gigawatt glare of sunlight. Hope, too, was squinting in pain and ducking her head. After the eternal dimness of firelight and the eldritch globes that barely lit the claustrophobic darkness of the Ever After, to reform in the shimmering heat-haze and endless expanse of a desert at midday was rather a shock. Rachel had told me about making the Petrified Forest tulpa after she'd awoken from the trauma of it. But seeing it in person was, well, _breathtaking._

"Rachel made this?" I gasped, grabbing Ash's arm. Ash, of course, had retrieved sunglasses from nowhere and perched them on his nose. Newt had done the same, though she now had the grace to offer Hope a pair, too. I blinked, because both Newt and Hope were now clad in colorful tank tops and khaki shorts. I, on the other hand, remained in the clothing I'd altered from Ash's closet, and I immediately began sweating like a pig. "How far does it go?"

"Miles," Newt said, looking at all the little checkered blankets spread out here and there on the sand, next to the ramshackle bar.

"Miles," I said breathlessly. Wow. There were even ghostly ley lines here. Did they look like that in the real world? The amount of detail was stunning. What had Rachel experienced here that had left the place burned so indelibly into her mind?

There were probably forty or fifty demons here, enjoying fried chicken, burgers and fries. Only the food made the place a restaurant. But where was it coming from? There was nothing else nearby, save for a colorful jukebox (huh?) sitting on a patch of dirt and a single dusty Buick lurking alone in the parking lot. Someone had left a cooler full of Cokes and Budweisers on its hood to brave the heat. Amazingly, it was still full of ice.

Newt chuckled, seeing where my gaze had stopped. "Next time you see Rachel, ask her to conjure up the keys for us."

I snickered at the mental image of a Buick full of drunk demons roaring through the desert. Did demons even know how to drive? And that jukebox… I looked back at the record in my hand. Aha. Now it made sense.

A weak breeze dusted by, blowing grit in our faces without cooling us in the slightest. Even with my demon-cursed skin, it was uncomfortable. Worse, there was a sense about the place, an emotional signature that resonated with isolation and desolation. "How can you guys stand being here for more than five minutes?" I asked, wiping my brow. The demons all around didn't seem to notice either the heat _or_ the angst in the slightest.

"Are you kidding? They're all here for the sun. It's our first daylight tulpa in thousands of years."

I whistled, seeing the desert from the eyes of a daylight-deprived demon. Yeah, I'd pay a lot for a few hours in the sun, even if it were only an illusion. No wonder Al hoarded his precious conservatory so greedily.

"No familiars," the demon host called, moving to meet us. I turned around, a little disoriented.  
>I knew we were underground, standing on one of the glyphs demons used to connect rooms, but the illusion was perfect. Dalliance certainly didn't resemble the cave that it was, any more than it resembled a restaurant.<p>

Newt drew herself up and removed her sunglasses. Calvin — I could read his nametag now — turned pale and began to apologize profusely. His gaze fell on Hope and me. "But—" he said, and Ash stepped forward.

"My _Berexadtha _is here to speak to your boss," he said, indicating me. "Dipshit," he added.

"_Berex…" _Calvin's eyes went wide. "You? You're the… Right! I'll, uh, be right back," Calvin hurried off into what looked like the middle of nowhere, and abruptly vanished into thin air… thin air which swung back and forth for a moment like it was hinged.

Newt snickered. "You've been such a recluse, they didn't really believe in you, Yvette. But Rachel really freaked them out last week. You won't get nearly the hassle that she did. Don't let Dali cheat you. A new tulpa is a priceless thing. Only us girls can make them."

Hope frowned, and I winced. I wasn't really looking forward to trying to make a bigger tulpa, even if the forest ultimately hadn't taken any major toll on my mind or sanity. Ash, on the other hand, was basking in the glow of forty-some male demons looking at him with envious eyes. No matter how bad his day had been, it had just gotten a whole lot better. I wanted to be annoyed, but both Therese and I were extremely satisfied to let all the other dudes here know that we were very much taken, thank you. Enough that even Ash's possessive hand on my backside didn't bother me in the least.

"I thought you didn't want anyone to know about Hope."

Newt smiled. "I was sparing her from having to deal with Ku'Sox. He knows about her now, but he's been banished from Dali's place since he picked on Rachel. He won't bother us here."

Ku'Sox. Now there was a demon I never wanted to meet again.

Dali appeared from behind the hidden swinging door in the shimmering air. I almost didn't recognize him — every other time we'd met, he'd been doing the justice-related thing, dressing the part of a corporate higher-up. Here, he was dressed as a fry-cook, baseball cap and all. He had the appearance of a nondescript man in his fifties, the cap covering his receding hairline better than the grease-spattered wifebeater covered his paunch. The last time I'd met him, he'd pulled some kind of "waaay older than you" aura that had scared the spit out of me. I pulled that memory in close, because right now it was nearly impossible to take him seriously.

"Ah, yes. Table for four?" he asked. Then he frowned at my outfit, and Ash's. "You call that fitting the theme?"

"My treat," Newt said, stalling my protest that I didn't have any cash on me and that we didn't have time to eat. Well, it wasn't like I was broke, after all — I had Ash's vast fortune at my fingertips. But the thought of using that blood money to buy anything, especially _burgers_, made me queasy. Then I wondered what he meant by "fitting the theme," and recalled Rachel talking about how the jukebox changed the décor. I thought about explaining that neither Ash nor I had more than two curses to rub together at this point, but Newt came to our rescue, dressing us in lightweight Hawaiian shirts, jeans, and sandals. This was better.

We were installed on a checkered blanket on a nondescript patch of dirt and scrub by Dali himself. "Join us, Dali darling. Our Yvette has business to discuss with you, regarding the case involving Zaebos."

Dali gave her a smarmy smile, but he did park himself beside her with the air of a man who might need to make a hasty retreat. "Newt, love, there's nothing I can do to help any more. If you're going to sue in court, you're going to have to follow the rules you yourself set down, there's just nothing for it." His eyes fastened on the tulpa/record in my hand, and his expression changed to delight. "Why, Yvette! Have you brought something for me?"

I was about to answer, but a waitress had just placed five lemonades with little umbrellas in front of us. _Thank goodness_, I thought, reaching for one and taking a few quick gulps before I registered the flavor. It was tart, slightly fizzy, very cold, and laced with what tasted slightly like brimstone, under the far more bold taste of burnt amber. Considering all the terrifying experiences at the demon mall, this particular drink wasn't half bad, actually. I recalled another odd little rule of dining at Dalliance. Diners got what they got, depending on the era of the memory currently playing in the jukebox. I wondered if I'd get stoned if I changed the theme to something a little less painful on the eyes.

"Easy on the Bomber, Evie," Ash said, amused. "I don't want to have to carry you out of here."

But I'd just done a doubletake, because the waitress was the very woman I wanted to talk to. "Brooke?" I asked.

Brooke — it had to be her, she was wearing a Mobius pin on her too-tight T-shirt — looked over us with feigned disinterest as she distributed plastic dinnerware rolled up in paper napkins along with paper plates. Then her eyes fell on Hope, and it was like someone had lit her up from within. Her avidly curious eyes roamed all over the poor girl greedily. She was far less curious about me, and Newt she avoided looking at entirely. "So it's done? You finally found your way home?"

Hope gave her a look that combined bewilderment and contempt in a way that only teenagers can manage. "Yet another person who knows more about what's going on than I do. How I love having it pointed out to me, constantly. Please, do it some more."

"Brooke," Dali said, annoyed. "Back to work."

Brooke flinched, even as she sneered at Hope. "Word has it she and Rachel broke this hellhole. You're all going down in a few years, and I'll be around to see it." She strode off, back stiff and proud, even as she braced for whatever Dali would throw at her.

Dali's eyes narrowed, but he didn't bother to punish her. "That one… I should get my money back. Coven quality witch, he said. Ley line expert, he said. Maybe so, but what a pain in the—"

"What did she mean, 'broke this hellhole?'" Hope asked, giving Newt a penetrating glare. "Is there something else you didn't tell me?"

Newt smirked. "Sure, there's plenty I'm not telling you. You have to live with me, after all. Think I'm going to let you listen to all these biddies gossip about me?"

Hope scowled at her. "I don't _have _to, you know. I could still change my mind."

I eyed the two of them, curious. The squabbling had the ring of a comfortable relationship about it, but whether it was mother and daughter or something more, I couldn't tell. The idea of Hope and Newt in some kind of _relationship_ seemed horribly inappropriate to me, but then, who was I to talk? Then I realized what Brooke must have meant. "It's the hole she tore in reality, isn't it?"

Hope gasped, and Newt fixed me with a very grim look. "What did I do _now_?" Hope asked, slumping.

There was no point to beating around the bush, since it affected all of us who had ties to the Ever After. "A few years ago, Rachel made a ley line. You made one, too, when the accident happened. I saw it when we visited the lab today."

"It's sucking the energy out of the Ever After, one sunrise at a time," Newt said. "Before, all the ley lines were either preexisting, or made by the demons who were trapped here. Rachel broke the balance. Then Evie made it worse by screwing with the resonances. Then…"

"One hole, the Ever After might have survived," said Dali, as I flinched. This was the first I'd heard that I'd managed to help break the Ever After, too. "But two? It's accelerated the decline. Newt warned us for years, but of course we didn't listen. We all believe it now. Where we might have had centuries, now we have mere years."

"Until what?" asked Hope.

"The death of the Ever After, and all trapped within it," Newt said. "It was always supposed to collapse into itself eventually, of course. That was the whole point. I suppose it's about time."

"No! God, I killed all those people, and now_ this_? Isn't there any way to fix it?"

Newt settled back on her elbows, showing the sun her throat. "We could kill you, and Rachel. We've discussed that. You made the lines; it's possible they are still connected to you in some way. Most of the lines in reality were made by demons, and occasionally, a demon's line winks out when he does."

Hope looked horrified, but said nothing as Newt continued, "But if we kill you both and find out that it wasn't the right solution, well, won't we be in a bind…? Neither of us could possibly channel the energy needed to close such a hole without frying our minds even more than they already are."

She meant herself and me. "Gee, thanks," I said. "Could the four of us do it together, working with some of the guys?"

"Maybe." Newt reclined, as if discussing the doom of the Ever After was about as interesting or relevant as last week's grass clippings. "Last resort."

I looked at Ash, who had been unusually silent. There was a hurt little crinkle around his eyes, but as ever, he kept most of the emotion off his expression. "It won't come to that," he said.

Dali was giving us a suspicious eye. "Rachel's _dead_," he said, a shade too loud. He leveled his ancient gaze on me, and doofy baseball cap or not, I shivered. "Isn't she…?"

"Uuh…" I stammered.

"Oops. Was that supposed to be a secret? I forget," Newt said, and I wanted to smack my forehead in annoyance. Well, Rachel's secret was out now, wasn't it? And no hope of keeping it contained to just our table, either…demons all around began to whisper at the news that they _hadn't_ lost their desert-creating superstar to their demented day-walking creation after all.

I shook my head, then wiped my brow again. Much as I enjoyed heat, this was a bit much. And I rather wanted to get the conversation away from Rachel and the ley lines she'd made, before anyone suggested that_ I_ be the one to repair them. There was time — years, even! — and I really had to focus on the most pressing matter. "Um, Dali…" I paused, uncomfortable addressing him by a nickname. Were we on a nickname basis? He didn't seem to mind. "I was wondering if you'd let me talk to Brooke for a few minutes."

Dali blinked at the abrupt change in topic. "Why the hell would you want to? She's a bitch on wheels."

"Brooke knows about her." I indicated Hope. "It's for the court case."

"Pfft." Dali flicked the pink umbrella from his drink over his shoulder and took a long gulp. "Good luck. Hope you're into serious torture, because that's the only way you'll get anything from _her_."

I couldn't help flinching, but decided Dali was exaggerating. He had to be. I mean, I could just douse her with Al's truthiness spell and she'd sing like a lark. "Soooo I _can_ go talk to her, then?" I asked.

"She's busy. The place is hopping and I'm always short-staffed. Her shift doesn't end until Monday. Come back then."

I blinked. "What day is today, anyway?"

"Thursday."

"You've got her working five-day shifts?"

"Why not? She doesn't need sleep. Mondays and Tuesdays are slow. She gets them off, for her stirring."

"She's a slave, Evie," Ash reminded me. "She's only here for one reason."

Hope looked about as disgusted as I felt. "I think I see why you haven't taken me out to eat before," she said to Newt. "Not only does this place reek, but you're still living in the Dark Ages."

"Home sweet home," Newt said, unperturbed.

Hope and I shared an eloquent look, both deciding not to say any more on the subject. Why bother?

"I really need to talk to her _now_, Dali," I said, and I could feel the demon beside me change gears into bargaining mode as his eyes flicked back to the record sitting next to my plate. "Can I bribe you with a tulpa?"

Dali opened his mouth to reply and his hand reached for my tulpa, but he drew it back quickly when Newt stabbed at his hand with her spork. "Come now," she said to me sternly. "I told you not to let him cheat you. Dali, Yvette made a lovely new memory for your restaurant. Give her five minutes with your witch."

"Full royalties," Dali replied, taking another swig of his drink.

I had no idea what my construct was worth, but I decided to go for broke. "You can have ten percent," I said, mostly to be cheeky.

Dali scoffed. "Haven't even seen it yet. Is it a daylight scene?"

"No."

"Modern buildings?"

"No."

"Full royalties," he said again. "I don't need another fucking pretty nature scene."

"Bullshit. It's a new memory. Your customers want novelty, without all this heat. Twenty percent, and I retain full ownership rights."

_That's asking rather a lot for such a small tulpa_, Ash told me, thoroughly amused.

_I don't really want to give it to him,_ I replied. _It's mine. It's like giving away my first real piece of art, and letting everyone step all over it. I'd rather just make him something else, but we really don't have time._

"How big?"

I looked around, gauging the distances. "Uh, maybe here to the end of the parking lot?" The distance was about what I remembered as the size of the clearing, maybe a little smaller. "Could be a little bigger than that — it's the first one I made."

Dali paused, thinking. "Given how fucked up your head is, I want to see what I'm getting."

"Hey!"

"I'll go plug it in and we'll check it out." Dali held out his hand.

His pensive expression once more settling into his usual bemused smirk, Ash took the little yesteryear relic from my hand and carried to the jukebox, Dali by his side. With a bit of fiddling and cursing, the two demons wrestled the jukebox open and slipped the record into one of the empty slots.

Demons made various noises of consternation, annoyance, and then shouts of amazement as reality shifted. Dalliance was now contained within my forest. Once again I was overtaken by my own wonder at the gorgeous, lush detail of the scene. The scent of pine and greenery leapt all around, overpowering the pervasive burnt amber stench of the Ever After. It was a warm summer night, and the air was blissfully cool compared to the unforgiving heat of the desert. Thousands of stars twinkled in the clear darkness above us. Where the swinging air-door had been was an old fashioned Coleman tent, and behind it, smoke rose in a long, straight plume, the cooking fire apparently hidden from view. The scent of wood smoke and fire-charred meat filled the air. The other demons were now lying on heavy wool blankets or sitting on camp chairs, with small dome tents dotted here and there. And in the enter of the clearing was another cheerful campfire surrounded by our demon summoning circle, just as I had remembered it, candles and all. Closing my eyes, I felt around, and found the illusion of my ley line, correct in every possible detail.

Dali's eyes were wide with appreciation as he fingered the material of the large tent. Interesting…I hadn't put it there, but it fit perfectly with the memory. I _would_ have put just such a tent right there if the scene had called for one. My stomach began to growl as I wondered if Dali knew how to replicate s'mores.

"Well?" I asked, as demons clapped and called out their approval of the new setting.

"Five minutes," Dali said. "Fifty percent of the royalties, and you retain ownership of the original."

"Done," I said, because I was tired of haggling and I really wanted to get on with this whole stupid adventure. Not that I was looking forward to dealing with my second-least-favorite Coven witch, mind you. I just wanted to get it over with.

"In the back," he said, beckoning me to follow. "I'll show you to the break room."

I got up to follow him, and saw that nobody else was coming with us. Fine by me. I couldn't imagine that Brooke would be much of a danger to me.

"Brooke!" Dali roared. The witch, currently serving a plate of hot dogs, hamburgers, and over-charred shish-kebob to a group of demons while simultaneously avoiding their roving hands, jumped and nearly dumped the plate on the head of the closest man. "Break time!"

Brooke wiped her hands on her greasy apron, looking at Dali with surprise and not a little trepidation. She hadn't bothered to change her clothing from the desert tulpa, and she was still covered in orangeish dust. She might have been defiant enough at us, but her expression now left no doubt that she thought she was in serious shit, and it was time to pay the piper.

We passed through the tent, which held camp tables full of pots and pans and cooking utensils, and out the back past the large fire pit, oven, and grill built out of stones and iron. The cooking was being tended to by a bare-chested demon in jeans and a cowboy hat, tongs in one hand, a beer in the other. _Succorbenoth_, my brain supplied as I took a moment to admire his perfect pectorals and washboard abs before tearing my gaze away to stare at the rest of the kitchen setup in wonder. I hadn't built this. But if I had, it would have looked exactly like this. The whole tulpa thing was starting to weird me out. "Dali… I didn't make that. Why does it look like I made that?"

"Tulpas are reflections, borrowing from memory and reality itself. They are holograms, containing more than what is merely visible. You must have done a lot of camping — you've seen these structures at some point, and they are intimately connected with your memory of this forest. The curse on the restaurant can draw on these leftover connections, even though it's been severed completely from your mind." Dali looked about his creation proudly. "That's what makes Dalliance so unique — it can dig deep into the tulpas and find exquisite little details like this, and bend them to our reality. The curse isn't sentient, but it's close. I no longer even have to tweak the settings — new, unexpected tidbits like these just appear, working off the existing structures and creating new illusions to fit. It's what makes any new tulpa exciting to my customers."

"Wait, the creation of a tulpa _borrows from reality_? What does that mean?"

"Tulpas are a complex soul magic. A lot of the old lore has been lost. The creation of the tulpa is more than giving a simple memory shape and substance. It draws on reality and Ever After and that special place inside a woman's soul, existing simultaneously in all three — at least, until you're severed from it."

Something was tweaking at my mind, some vague connection, but I couldn't puzzle it out. Then it was gone. "What happens if a woman creates a tulpa and it's not completed?"

"If the severing is incomplete, you leave bits of your soul behind. Happened now and then. Usually the soul can regenerate, unless you got a really incompetent man who left too much behind."

"But… what if there isn't a demon man around?"

Dali shrugged. "Never heard of that happening before. Tulpa creation is high-order soul magic. Never heard of it _not_ being done deliberately, with a male nearby to pull it out." He considered, thoughtful. "I honestly don't know what would happen. It'd be a big drain on her resources. Could affect reality, too. I don't know."

"And the… food…?" I asked, looking at the hot dogs, burgers, and steaks sizzling on the grill. "Is the food from my memory, too?"

"If you'd specifically made it part of the tulpa, it'd be illusory, but you'd still taste and smell it for the duration of your stay within the construct. Fine for my purposes, though I'm known for food that leaves with you. _Real_ food. Sort of."

"Sort of? What is it?"

Dali chuckled. "Old family secret, my recipes," he said.

"You don't want to know," Brooke said, coming in behind us. "Trust me."

Dali didn't deny it as he led us a short way through the trees to another dusty, stained old-style khaki green army tent. Entering it, I felt a moment of disorientation as the illusion fell away, leaving us in a cold, dark, stone room. I peeked back through the door, and saw what had to be the room we'd just left. No longer covered by the illusion from this vantage point, it was revealed to be a low stone corridor hewn straight from bedrock, as stark and bare as most of the demon dwellings. Dali lit the lights with a word, revealing a small but very well-stocked demon curse lab, and a cot with several disheveled blankets.

"Brooke, you have five minutes. Yvette has some questions for you. Answer them honestly, or answer to me." He fixed her with his ancient black gaze, and she wilted, shivering visibly. She gave him a meek nod, but leveled a look of sheer, murderous hatred at his back as he left us alone. The cold stone door closed behind him, and she sighed, visibly relieved. Suddenly she looked far more tired and browbeaten than she'd let on a moment before. Without wasting her breath on pleasantries, she sat on the cot, slipped off her sandals and began to rub her feet. "What do you want?" she asked, suspicion coloring her curiosity.

"Information," I said. "I'm trying to stop Zaebos. I need to know the deal you brokered with him all those years ago."

Brooke regarded me with a raised eyebrow. "Why should I help you?" _What can you do for me_, was what she was asking.

"It's urgent. Ellasbeth is about to have her baby, and if Zee doesn't get what he wants, he'll snatch it. It's the first cured elven child. The elves will go batshit and try to kill the demons, and probably the witches as well. I can…" I looked around at the sad little room, realizing this was probably where Brooke spent her days off, cooking up the curses she needed to keep up with the reality shifts at Dalliance. "I can see if I can make things more comfortable for you," I said. "I can make tulpas for him. Maybe I—"

Brooke stood up, examining me. "Fuck," she said. "_Another_ one of you? The Withons told me there were only three successful cures — Rachel, Lee, and Hope. And Hope's brother, but he doesn't really count. Where did you come from?"

"Chance. Evolution? It doesn't really matter, does it? The point is, I—"

"You're a demon, too." Brooke spat on the floor in disgust, an odd habit for a dignified West coast woman. Perhaps she'd picked it up here. "No. You get nothing from me. Not unless you get me out of here."

"What? I don't… uh… think you're for sale."

"_Everything's_ for sale here!" she said vehemently. "_Get me out._ That's my price."

Consternated, I thought about it for ten seconds. I could _try_, but I had an idea about how expensive familiars were, and this one in particular was valuable enough to Dali that he probably wouldn't go for it. All the tulpas in the world wouldn't make a difference if there was nobody to run his restaurant. "What if I can't?"

"Then you get nothing. Get me out, and I'll tell you anything you want to know."

"Brooke, you tried to kill Rachel. You made a deal to sell a girl to demons, you experimented on unknowing witches and their babies for years. I don't trust you to keep your word."

Brooke's eyebrows rose in bemused astonishment. "How the hell did you find all that out?"

But if she wasn't going to talk, than neither was I. "Do I need to tell Dali that you won't cooperate?"

Brooke shifted, her back straightening, regarding me with a proud, defiant hate-filled look. "Miss Sinclaire, I remember you back when you came before the Coven after your demon summoning killed two witches. Oliver was in favor of Alcatraz, but you insisted so prettily that you were only trying to help, blah, blah, blah. You expect me to believe that you're going to tell my delightful Lord and Master that I'm not cooperating? Do you have _any idea_ what he'll do to me?"

Fuck. I'd hoped to use that threat on her, but she'd outwitted me: she was taking herself hostage. "Nicely played, Brooke," I said, exasperated, "but time is short. I've only got days, and I can't afford to lie on my ass after making Dali the tulpas he'll want in exchange for you… if he even agrees to it in the first place."

"Too bad." Brooke knew she held all the cards.

"My point is that I don't think I can avoid telling him I need the information NOW and that you won't give it to me," I said angrily. Damn the woman. I'd hoped to possibly find a basis for cooperation here, but she was making things totally impossible.

"Sinclaire, I'd rather die than do this forever. If by doing nothing, the elves murder all these bastards and the Ever After eventually collapses, then I'm going to watch and giggle and dance on their ashes before I get sucked away too. The only thing I want is freedom. I don't give a damn if I'm shunned, so long as I'm away from this pit. Get me out. Get me_ home_."

Oh, I whined and stomped and pleaded, appealed to the better nature she'd either buried or abandoned, and finally let loose with empty threats when I reached the end of my patience. It didn't work—Brooke had latched on to the one lifeline she had, and refused to let go. But if I were honest with myself, I'd known from the moment Vivian had said her name what I'd have to do. I'd have to bend my line, and try to buy her from Dali.

I just hoped it wouldn't cost me any more of my soul to do it.


	30. Dealing with Dali

_Yay, semester's over! Time for lots of writing! :) I'm going to try very hard to keep up with once-a-week updates. Thanks again to everyone who's written to me!  
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**In Which More Than One Indecent Proposal is Offered**

I left her there, wrapped in her shredded dignity and smug with this little victory, and wandered back to the kitchen area. There I found Dali berating Succorbenoth. The stench of the burnt amber, created when Dali cursed both the food and the hapless Benny, was so overpowering, and mingled so badly with the smell of cooked meat, that I wanted to hurl. But puking in his kitchen was the kind of thing that even a demon who probably didn't have to worry about health inspectors was likely to frown on.

"Dali, I want to buy Brooke from you," I told him without preamble.

Benny made a coughing sound that sounded suspiciously like a word, but I couldn't make it out. Probably "sucker" in some infernal tongue. Dali, far from being shocked by this revelation, simply said, "Step into my office."

His office was the second half of the kitchen tent, but once I stepped inside, the illusion fell away. My mind tried to grasp how a room this size could possibly fit into that tent, then recalled that of course it didn't — the tent was the illusion. Even weirder, we were back in the CEO office, which I knew was part of the justice building that the demons had mocked up to look like FIB headquarters. This day was really bending my senses. Dali was once again the suave businessman when he stepped inside, beautiful suit and all, when he sat behind his yacht of a desk and contemplated me from on high.

I, of course, was still in my sweaty desert-tulpa getup, and I shivered in the cold chill of the luxurious stone room. Dali noticed, and did not turn the heat up. _Jerk._

"No," he said, answering my question. "She's far too valuable. What use are tulpas if there's nobody to help me run the place?"

I hesitated, but there was nothing for it. Brooke had dug her own grave, after all. "Dali, she's not talking unless she gets her freedom."

Dali grinned. "Suspected she'd pull that on you. Shall I stick her on the spit for awhile?"

I wasn't sure whether he was serious. "Don't do anything horrible to her or I'll take that tulpa back. Honestly, Dali, I can't blame her. A high Coven member, reduced to waiting tables? Being abused left and right?" My eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Do you make her do more than just waitressing?"

Dali tented his fingers on his desk, unperturbed by my accusation that he was basically running a brothel, too. "Hardly. Nobody can stand her. I specifically avoided breaking her to keep her spirits up. Nobody really wants to be served by a cringing little waif, not _here_. Her defiance amuses my clientele. They'd all _like_ to take her down a peg, but I prevent most of the abuse."

Of course they would. I'm sure if I were a depraved, sick, angry little man trapped in a dying alternate reality, having a woman forced to serve me against her will would be real satisfying. _Ugh_. I forced my brain to stay civil. "All right, cards on the table. Can I force her to talk to me? Al once used a potion on my mind," I suggested, remembering that awful trial, so long ago. I hated to suggest it, but time really was of the essence. "Made me spill secrets against my will."

"Not going to work on her. She's a Coven woman. Got all the latest mind-protection spells that witches could dream up, all connected to their little collective. Mind magic will run off her like water off a raincoat charm. Push too hard and you'll turn her into a vegetable. Can't sever her from here, so…" Dali shrugged in mock helplessness. "Bloody pain in the ass, if you ask me. Looks like I can't help you."

"Sell her to me, Dali!" I said again, knowing he'd hear the plea in my voice. "I'll make you something spectacular. I'll sweeten the deal for all the demons who work here — small tulpas of their choice. I'll…" _Oh, shit, Evie, don't say it…_ "I'll agree to owe you a favor."

"Yvette, love, you really have no idea how the Ever After works, do you?" Dali was gazing at me with a new expression in his eyes, one that I didn't like at all.

"I don't have _time_ for this shit!" I knew I was going to get screwed. I always got screwed. The last thing you wanted to tell a demon was how much you needed something, because it was basically asking for a good, hard screwing of the infernal variety. But Dali wouldn't be entertaining me in his office if I didn't have something he wanted. I pinched the bridge of my nose, dying a little more inside. "Just… tell me what you want."

Dali hadn't broached my personal space, but I could feel the huge, ancient aura of power that cloaked him, even at this distance. He regarded me with a calculating look. "I am the eldest and most experienced demon left in the Ever After," he said.

I blinked. _So what?_ "And…?"

"I have the power to protect your mind, better than your chosen anchor. Keep him as your _yazataksch_ and lover. Mate with me."

My mouth dropped open. Dali's tone was serious, but entirely business. "You're _proposing_?! To me?!"

"I'm seeking a good investment," he replied. "If you have any hope of your Ashmedai surviving the coming apocalypse, you'll have to access the full power of your mind. You'll need better protection. I can help you."

"But…" I shook my head in disbelief at the turn this conversation had taken. "No offense, Dali, but you scare me shitless."

Dali smiled at my honesty. "Of course I do. You'd be a fool not to fear me. But that's no obstacle. Fear is overcome with knowledge and experience, and I have much to offer. You want something from me, and I want something from you. I want to survive. I'm not blind to the dynamics playing out here."

"Dynamics?" My brain wasn't keeping up with this conversation in the least. Dali had caught me completely flat-footed and I was scrambling to keep up.

"Newt knows how to fix the ley lines, I'm positive of it. Rachel made her line five years ago, and Newt knew it was destroying us… but she did nothing. She'd decided it was finally time to let us all perish. Then she acquired her new toy, and suddenly she had something to protect. Now her little bird is dying, and so is the Ever After. I can't help but feel that the events are related — Hope's decline, her malformed ley line, and her accidental destruction of the elven facility. Finding out more may help Newt save the girl, and give her more reason to save the Ever After. You say that my Brooke knows the answer. I could pound it out of her, eventually, but I could also use her to bargain with you."

"I can't. My mind's screwed up. Ash said it would be dangerous to form the bond."

Dali leaned back, eyes crinkling with amusement. "He's right, it would be. With _him_."

My heart had begun to slow its frantic pace, because Dali really was making this conversation about alliances, not emotion. How an arrogant millennia-old being like him would react to being rejected terrified me, but it was much easier to turn down a potential business arrangement. "Why?"

"Ashmedai is… shall we say… emotionally compromised, where you are concerned," Dali said. "Males who have never mated often are, when they have their mind set on someone. Such bonds are far more dangerous when infatuation is involved. It would be different with me. I have prior experience, and I am an expert in matters of the mind."

I digested this for a few moments. "You're saying demons… if they fall in love, they _shouldn't_ mate?"

Dali snorted. "You are such a modern woman. No doubt Rachel is just as stubborn. Mating has nothing to do with love, and everything to do with mutual benefit."

I recalled what Al had said about meeting his wife only a handful of times before they'd wed. The whole idea was utterly foreign to me. "You didn't answer the question."

Dali shrugged. "Making decisions like this based on a temporary attraction driven by lust is unwise. Ashmedai is our youngest demon apart from Ku'Sox, inexperienced and damaged. Have you not tried to kill him several times already?"

"Misunderstandings," I mumbled, feeling my treacherous face flush.

"You would do far better to select someone more experienced. I wouldn't coddle and distract you as he does. I can help you reach your full potential."

I gazed back at the demon before me, whose eyes were so dark red that the goat-slitted pupils were nearly hidden. No, he wouldn't coddle me. He'd fucking break me, own me, and control my power. Al had once told me that, bad as he himself was, I would definitely not enjoy Dali's tutelage. But then… Al had been horrid to me precisely because he, too, was "emotionally compromised" where I was concerned. Just not quite in the same way. I wasn't even remotely tempted by this offer. Was I?

Therese… was.

Therese wanted power. Therese, ever practical, was intrigued by Dali's offer, precisely because he'd told her he would let her keep her lover. He wasn't interested in that aspect of the mating bond. Hadn't Adrian told me, you could be mates without sleeping together…?

No. I didn't trust Dali. My gut was still mostly telling me to run, run, run away. How could I ever bear to let him bite me? Rake me with the claws I knew had to be hidden under his harmless-looking demeanor…? And yet I couldn't just tell him to shove it, or he'd kick me out of Dalliance and that'd be the end of it. "Dali… I'll need some time to think about it."

Dali smiled mirthlessly. "As you wish." Nah, he didn't buy it for a second, did he? I pressed on, regardless.

"In the meantime… if you recognize that Brooke's knowledge may be integral to the survival of the Ever After, you should let me buy her."

Dali flexed his fingers, his body language otherwise giving me absolutely nothing to work with. "Her life's not for sale. She knows far too much, and if our amnesia curses won't touch her mind, we can't keep her from disseminating our secrets. As I mentioned, I could crack them, but it would leave her too damaged to function, at which point you might as well put her out of her misery. No, I will not sell her life to you."

"But Ash laid a slew of curses in Adrian's head!"

"Adrian?"

"Another Coven witch. He just apprenticed himself to Ash."

Dali raised an eyebrow. "The witch was willing?" I nodded. "Well, that makes all the difference. Brooke wouldn't cooperate with me. I can hold her soul, but I can't force her without destroying her mind."

I hissed in frustration, turning away. I wanted to knock something over. How could I get this far and be thwarted by yet another misguided, idiot Coven witch? After everything I'd been through just today, to be stymied because I was too soft to get medieval on Brooke's ass was just totally _unfair._ And yet, Dali did have a point. A Coven-trained ley line master who could also spindle, who knew any number of disguise curses, and who was no longer accountable to the Coven's rules? Especially given the bent of her scientific interests? Shunned or not, Brooke was too dangerous to rejoin reality with her memory intact.

I paused a moment to consider the irony of that thought. Oliver currently felt the same way about me, not to mention his fellow Coven members. They'd stood over me in judgment once, but since I hadn't used any of the demons' magic myself, they'd let me go. Hadn't Newt and Dali both decided pretty much the same thing about my own mind? Too dangerous to rejoin reality? Wasn't I under a curse of freaking death if I cut loose again? Who was I to judge Brooke?

But no. If either of us belonged here in the Ever After with the demons, it was Brooke. I would never have stooped to what she'd done. I'd been unwittingly destructive, but she'd arranged to sell a girl into slavery, to a fucked up demon who'd have raped her mind and stolen her body. You didn't get much colder than that.

"I might sell you her _death_, though," Dali said, thoughtfully.

"Her _death_?" I stared at him as I worked through that statement. "As in, I pay you a stupid amount of money or memory or whatever, just so I can kill her?" I wanted to throw up.

Dali nodded, expression clear of any concern or conscience. "Sums it up nicely. She'd probably appreciate it."

Like hell she would. Much as she'd said she'd rather die, they'd struck me as empty words. Brooke didn't want to die, she wanted to escape. I only had to recall the look in her eyes as she glared daggers at Dali's back to know that not only was she unbroken by her five-year ordeal, but that she'd never consent to assisted suicide. She was not nearly at that stage of defeat. Give her several decades, perhaps… "No. That won't work, either."

"Soft," he said, lip curling as he regarded me. "Even if you freed her, she'd stab you in the back. You know this as well as I do. I won't sell you her life, but I can allow her death. I know you're not experienced with slaughter; I could do it for you. I could make it painless for her. I could keep her entirely ignorant of her fate — she'd never know what hit her."

"So I should _lie_ to her…?" Was this what I'd been reduced to? Whore out my memories to purchase euthanasia for demon familiars, in order to save a girl from a demon only to have her die in any case? Where was I finally going to draw the line, here? Stupid woman! If only there were some way to…

…_to break Brooke free of the Coven collective so the demon mind-altering curses **would** work on her._

Dali shrugged, oblivious to my sudden revelation. "Obviously."

I was still looking at this newfound crazy idea. "What if we _could_ modify her memories and prevent her from sharing the knowledge she gained here?" _She'd never go for it. Would she?_

Dali considered, cocking his head. "Ah. I see you have an idea. You really are a resourceful woman, Yvette. You tend to find solutions nobody has thought of. I've been watching you, since Ash brought you to my office on the day of your arrival. Are you certain you won't reconsider my offer?"

That thought that he'ds spent more than two seconds thinking about me both flattered me and made me sick with fear. I really hadn't wanted to catch anyone's attention, but I'd had to put on a show for the court, and then I'd had to go and nearly blow up a chunk of the Ever After. Hardly keeping my head _down._ I pretended that I didn't hear the last part of his comment. "She can't be severed from the Coven without physically being in their headquarters, with everyone present and working together, right?"

Dali nodded, looking dubious. "It would still require her cooperation," he said thoughtfully. "If she wouldn't agree to lose her memory, why should she agree to be severed from the Coven?"

"Because she won't be un-shunned, otherwise." I felt my lips twisting into an expression of malicious pleasure. Sweet, sweet revenge that benefitted everyone except that officious little prick, Oliver. Oh, this would be _fun_, if it worked. "Even if I bought Brooke her freedom, she'd still be a shunned witch. But so am I, and Rachel, and probably a slew of other witches who probably don't really deserve it. But what if we break into the Coven and undo all the shunnings? And while we're there, we can break Brooke from the collective, and maybe boot out Oliver, too"

"Oliver?"

"Sir Oliver, their fearless leader. He's just taken over the Coven. He's on a huge anti-demon-magic kick. He'd already shunned Rachael and I, but now he's even shunned the other members just for associating with us. But he didn't dissolve the Coven collective."

"He couldn't dissolve the collective himself. I'm surprised he managed to shun the other members- such a curse would normally require several witches to cast. But this way he continues to wield the full power of the collective. There are a lot of spells that require it, whether or not the other members are willing." Dali's eyes were bright with mischief, though I could tell he was still skeptical that this was worth his time. "So what are you proposing, Yvette?"

"We go in, take control of the collective, and rescind the shunning on all of us — Brooke, the other members, Rachel and myself, and anyone else. We boot Oliver out. Except we also boot Brooke out, too. Then she's no longer protected by the collective, and you can wipe her mind after she spills the beans." I looked hopefully at Dali. "Is it possible?"

"Intriguing notion, Yvette. But you forget the _other _Coven members. There's four more. Shunned or not, would they betray their own?"

"One of them's on my side. Vivian…." I gave her situation a thought. Perhaps a day or two of being shunned would make her reconsider. "She might be convinced. Ash hacked his way into Adrian's head, so he's a member now, too. You could possibly do the same through Brooke's mind, if she's willing. The only other member is Oliver. Ku'Sox killed all the rest."

Dali looked a little disturbed. "I see. Ah. That might explain some of those new bottles on Newt's shelf."

I blinked. "Huh?"

"She extracted all the souls he'd devoured on his rampage. She was looking for Rachel's at the time. But she found a few others of worth, which she kept. It wouldn't do to let him absorb new souls with any real power in them."

A sheaf of ceremonial knives in her arms, a bound Ku'Sox, and Newt's psychotic expression popped involuntarily into my head, and I flinched at the memory. So it hadn't been a physical key at all. She'd been looking for Rachel. The key to…

_The key to saving the Ever After from Rachel's own damaged ley line, and perhaps Hope's too…because now she had a reason to save it._

Dali was studying his fingers carefully as he considered the proposal "There's a reason that the Coven always had six members. Six is the minimum number for creation and maintenance of a stable collective. Six is the minimum required to destroy one, as well. Myself, Brooke, Ashmedai, and the other two you mentioned — that's five. We'd need this Oliver's cooperation to fully dissolve it. However, influencing his mind has the same problems as influencing Brooke's. He will be protected as well."

"So my idea of busting in and un-shunning everyone, then breaking Oliver's little magic bubble isn't going to work? Even if you were there?" Damn. It had been a really fucking _awesome_ idea.

"I'm afraid not." Dali scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Collectives are an unpredictable branch of magic. It's possible I could find a way around the minimum requirement of six members, unified in purpose. I'd need time to study it, but frankly, I can't be bothered. Much easier just to kill the bitch."

"But that doesn't save either Hope or the Ever After, Dali," I reminded him, starting to feel desperate. "What about the souls of the others Coven members that Ku'Sox ate? Assuming Newt kept them?"

"No good. Unless you feel like murdering some witches to give them new bodies? Now there's a thought—"

"No," I sighed, angry and crestfallen. Once again, I was forced to face up to the fact that while I was a good and moral person, sort of, I made a really fucking lousy demon.

"Well, without a full six members—"

_Wait… murdered witches, souls in different bodies… "_Pierce!" I exclaimed. "Gordian Pierce. Al's familiar. He's a Coven member." I slumped, crestfallen. "At least he _was_, as of yesterday. I think Al killed him when he found out Pierce had helped Rachel hide herself from him."

"Did he, now?" Dali's eyes sparkled. "I cannot tell you how refreshing it is to have new characters in this tired old soap opera. Very well. If Al has not killed his familiar, and this Pierce proves willing to help, we will have our six members. In fact, we wouldn't need Vivian's help in that case, not if Al were able to "hack in" through Pierce, as you put it."

"Then you'd consider it?" I asked, hope finally blossoming in my gut.

"I would find a trip to reality amusing, particularly if we are there to destroy a centuries-old institution."

_Of course he would. _"Not destroying it, just…_modifying_ it," I clarified, suppressing a smile at the thought of Oliver's rage.

"No, we'd be destroying it," Dali said with a tight smile. "A Coven member is more powerful than you think, Yvette. As our numbers dwindle, they become more of a danger to us, should they ever get their act together. Have you never asked yourself why the Coven was established in the first place? I'll give you a hint: it wasn't to protect witches from human discovery."

I paused, only just now realizing what I'd proposed. Take down the Coven entirely? Sure, they'd been assholes to me and Rachel, but… My gut started to churn as I thought of the possible repercussions. Dali was right, the Coven was a significant piece on the Inderland power struggle chess board. Removing it could have terrible consequences down the road. But on the other hand, if I didn't, and the elves went to war on the witches….or the Ever After collapsed and took out most of reality's ley lines with it…wouldn't that be worse for witches in the long run?

_Oh, God. Who am I to be making decisions like this?_

"I don't like this idea so much anymore," I said. "Please tell me there's another way."

Dali leaned forward, expression serious. "Oh, there is. You watch me torture Brooke until she decides to talk. She'll crack, eventually. I can't guarantee the quality of the information, though."

Now I just wanted to cry. "If she knows we're out to take down the Coven, she won't go for it, will she? I'm going to have to lie to her in any case."

"Most likely," Dali agreed.

"Pierce and Adrian…am I going to have to lie to them, too?" The thought was dreadful. Not to mention pretty much impossible – I was a terrible liar.

"Probably."

"If you have six members present, you and Ash and Al can….do what you need to do even if the other three change their minds and try to stop you? Once we're there, I mean?"

"Absolutely."

Fuck. I was going to do this, wasn't I? I had no love for the Coven, but I couldn't see Adrian or Pierce forgiving me for this any time soon…not to mention witch society at large if they ever found out about my role in taking down the witchy equivalent of the Vatican. This would change the inderland society power structure. It might trigger fighting…power struggles…death, maybe on a wide scale. Would it blacken my soul any more or less than standing by and watching a demon torture a woman for information?

Damn Brooke. At the moment, I hated her almost enough to torture her myself.

On the other hand, the Coven was corrupt. No institution should have that power without being held accountable. And if I did nothing, I left that powerful institution in the hands of a single, deluded, self-righteous fanatic who might even now be shunning other innocent people…or even murdering them. Even Adrian had blood on his hands. Hadn't he admitted he'd have condoned murder to protect the witches' secret?

"_Two weeks ago, I'd have gone along with it. Now I'd rather die than go back to that, Viv. This whole 'ends justify the means' thing has to stop. I'm going to learn demon magic, and I'm going to bring Oliver down."_

Adrian would agree. I wouldn't have to lie to him. And Pierce…if he was still alive, would he agree? Did his love for Rachel mean more to him than his hatred of the demons? I prayed it would, because honestly, I didn't think I could deceive him, even if he'd deceived _me _for nearly a week, protecting Rachel's secret.

The death of Delores Mallorie, and perhaps countless others, was enough to tip the balance, in my mind. How many other innocent witches had the Coven silenced over the years? How many witches had they shoved into Alcatraz without trial, using lobotomies and drugs to neuter them? How many other witches had been bricked alive into the earth, for any reason? Yes, I was going to do this. Decision made, I hardened my heart and silenced any further angst on the subject. "All right. We have a plan, dependent on Al not having killed Pierce. If Pierce is dead…?"

"I'll persuade Brooke to give up the information the old fashioned way," Dali said mildly, as if he'd suggested milk and cookies. But his grin was very, very cold. "Free of charge. I'll sell tickets."

_Oh, God. Please don't be dead, Pierce… _ "And if we succeed in breaking Brooke and Oliver out of the collective? And we can modify her memory? Will you set Brooke free? You'll sell her body and soul to me?"

Dali grinned a toothy grin and inclined his head. "Body and soul, as you wish, _sans _any memory of her time here. There is still the matter of payment to be discussed, lovely Yvette."

"I'm _not_ mating with you in exchange," I said bluntly. "I'm not for sale."

Dali didn't look offended. "Very well. The offer remains open, should you change your mind."

"And keep in mind that if this works, not only are you making the world safer for demonkind, but your actions may help save your own skin. That's got to count for something, right? I mean, if you do nothing and keep Brooke, you may as well kiss your ass goodbye when Newt loses Hope to Zee and decides to let everyone here get sucked into oblivion."

Dali sat back, lacing his fingers behind his head. "Be that as it may, I'm a man of business. If we should we save the Ever After, Dalliance will continue to turn a profit if I have a supply of new memories to entertain my guests."

Tulpas. I could definitely do that. _Wanted_ to do it. I went through a list of places in my head. "Fine. You said you don't want nature scenes. What do you want?"

"Modern buildings. Daylight."

I smiled, thinking of the various places I'd lived. All my favorite haunts. What would demons crave from the modern world? "Dave & Busters. Good food. Arcade games. Billiards. Ping pong and air hockey." I leaned forward, smiling at his skeptical expression. "Fully stocked martini bar. Fifty different kinds of vodka."

Dali's eyes widened. "Are you a fan of vodka, Miss Sinclaire?"

"Connoisseur. My whole department partied there once a month for two decades. I tried them all. It wouldn't be the kind of buzz that leaves with you, but…"

Dali couldn't hide his avarice. "What else?"

"What _else_? How expensive is this woman, anyway?"

"You are purchasing my familiar as well as my cooperation, time, and considerable expertise. I require three tulpas. As large as you can manage. I will retain full ownership and all royalties, until the worlds collide. I realize that you cannot commit the recovery time now, so I will accept deferral of payment until the ley line problem is successfully resolved."

Heh. A couple of weeks of work on my part, once this was all done, most of that spent recovering on my ass. Barely effort at all on my part. I racked my brains for something spectacular, something that, like the arcade, would make him extra cash beyond just the food. The obvious answer clobbered me. Dali would keep all the profit, but I didn't care. At least I'd be on his good side. Finishing up this business without having my soul indebted to anyone would be worth losing out on mere cash. "Harrah's. New Orleans." Another hangout of mine, while I'd been a summoner. It was a good place to make contacts. Ok, fine, I'd had plenty of vices over the years, I admit it.

Dali actually sat back and sighed dreamily at the thought of having his own functioning casino. It didn't get much more modern than that, did it? "Agreed. What else?"

"Seriously?" I said. "Your own arcade, your own casino? You greedy bastard, what more do you _want_?" I held up a hand to show I was being rhetorical even as he smiled at the insult, trying to think of another moneymaking venture to really knock his socks off. When it hit me, I wanted to burst out laughing at the perversity of the idea. "Disneyworld. Orlando, Florida." I'd worked two hours away from Mouseland for twenty years, had visited whenever the cold darkness in my soul grew to be too much to bear, and I had to lose myself in a sea of humanity. "I can give you Disneyworld. Maybe not the whole thing, but some of the good rides, anyway. Space Mountain was my favorite."

Dali's mouth dropped open in delighted shock as he contemplated it. A boatful of drunk demons singing "A Pirate's Life For Me!" popped into my head. Dali wearing a beanie with Mickey Mouse ears. Devi skipping around in his sparkly little princess dress, hand in hand with Donald Duck. _Oh, God. Shoot me now, this idea is so awful, it's…_

"Brilliant," he breathed. "That's… brilliant. _ Horrifying_, but brilliant. Yvette, we have a deal."


	31. Hope in Hell

_Dang, this semester is really kicking my ass. But I have some new goodies for you in the coming weeks. Besides, I figured everyone's busy digesting Ever After. Awesome! I should mention the next chapter has a teensy spoiler, a character name that had not previously been revealed. It's very minor and there's nothing else from EA happening in this story for a good long while. _

**In Which a Few Questions are Answered, and Many More are Raised**

Dali and I hammered out a few more details — contingencies, mostly, for who would owe whom what when Things Went Wrong. Which, since I was involved, was almost certain. But assuming that Al hadn't killed Pierce, assuming that Brooke cooperated and let Dali into her mind, assuming that none of us blew up or imploded or went insane… I was now the future owner of a slightly dinged-up witch. He even gave me a slip of parchment as an I.O.U., detailing the transaction. He found it amusing rather than insulting that I'd asked for a receipt.

Sordid business of buying a slave completed, I made my way back to the tables — er, blankets and chairs of the campsite. I was happy to note that, while I was definitely an object of curiosity, the demons kept their hands to themselves as I walked by. Not so lucky was Brooke, who was once again nimbly weaving her way around delivering food, drinks, and scathingly contemptuous looks to the customers. I mused on the twists of fate that had led me here — had I been just a witch, Ash would have captured me at sixteen. And this would be me, dodging hands and serving tables for eternity. I was glad, on one level, that I could rescue Brooke from this, but I knew Dali would only find someone else, eventually. If I had any power at all, perhaps I could start to work some changes on demon society… but honestly, how much impact could one woman have against habits ingrained for thousands of years? Still… no harm in trying. And now that I knew how to make tulpas, I could track down the owners of my four friends, and see if they could be bribed. Dali didn't have to be the _only _demon with a casino of his own, after all.

The mood in the restaurant was one of drunken cheer — perhaps a bit of the tulpa's optimism had spread through the patrons. But the mood at our table, on the other hand, was downright constipated. Newt and Ash were scowling, unmoving, at each other, presumably having a conversation between minds. Hope was roasting a marshmallow in a desultory manner, a plate of graham crackers and chocolate beside her. She didn't bother to remove the marshmallow as it burst into flames, waiting until it resembled a charcoal briquette before transferring it to a graham cracker. She sandwiched a piece of chocolate between the marshmallow and another graham, and took up a second marshmallow as I sat down beside her.

"What's up with them?" I asked, indicating the two glaring demons, and she just shrugged. I picked up a marshmallow of my own, remembering how addicted I'd been to them once. I knew it wasn't real, but Dali had done an excellent job of mimicking the powdery squishiness.

"I wouldn't," Hope said, as I popped it into my mouth.

The taste was astonishing. The light, airy, sweet, chewy texture of a marshmallow, with the flavor of a tire fire. I spat it out and consigned it to the flames, eyes watering. "Oh my god."

"They're better if you char them," she said. "He got the chocolate mostly right." She handed me the s'more she'd made.

Thinking that anything would be better than the foul taste currently in my mouth, I took a bite. Well, the texture of the cracker was right, and the chocolate, though it hadn't melted properly, was at least sweet. But even Dali's artistry couldn't hide the pervasive reek of burnt amber that tainted all food and drink in the Ever After. I ate about half of it before I decided to just let my sustenance curse continue to do its job. Ew. I revised my idea about bribing demons with tulpas. What they really needed was real food and drink!

Hope let another marshmallow burn without saving it. "Ash said Dali proposed to you. He was pretty pissed off. What's with you two? Are you, like, dating? I thought he was your familiar."

"He's a lot of things to me. I don't know what you'd call it." Did demons _date_? With a half-smile, I recalled Ash's reaction to being asked to go dancing — ludicrous. "But we're sort of together. I need him."

Hope gave me a skeptical look. "You _do_ like him then. _ Like _like him?"

I felt my face flush, recalling what I'd told him this morning. But I was not about to have this confession in front of a restaurant of eavesdropping demons. "I need him," I repeated. "What about you and Newt? Is she being good to you?"

Hope glanced at Newt quickly, but Newt gave no sign she was aware of our conversation. Hope lowered her voice anyway. "She scares me sometimes," she confessed. "She's really moody — I mean, like Jekyll and Hyde moody. But it's not… I mean… I can tell she's not angry at _me_ though it still freaks me out all the same. She's best when she's teaching me something, though sometimes she gets confused and talks to me in another language, and calls me by the wrong name. Then we find out another thing I can't do, and she starts shooting things with curses and saying she should have let me die in the lines. And I cry, and she gets mad, but it's a more rational mad, and tells me how I need to be stronger and I'll never survive if I don't harden up…" She trailed off and looked at Newt, who was still grimacing at Ash. "We end each night like that movie, that 'sleep well, I'll most likely kill you in the morning' thing? She thinks that's hysterical," Hope frowned. "I think it's getting old. Sometimes I get stuck thinking about whatever's wrong with me, how I'm going to die anyway… and I remember what I did, and think she's right and should just get on with it. But whenever I start talking that way she smacks me and says I need to endure."

I had to pick my jaw up off the floor. "But she hasn't hurt you?"

Hope gave a sniffle, obviously hiding tears. "Well, some of the stuff she's taught me kind of hurts, but it's supposed to."

I shivered. "She's taught you spindling?"

Hope nodded. "Yeah, it tingles something fierce. Like I'm getting tickled all over, and I mean _all over. _Creepy, like a bad trip with inappropriate ants?"

"_Inappropriate_ _ants_, huh?" I said, thinking of Al and his gleeful grin as he tortured me. "Not frozen ice picks being jammed into your skull? So there_ is_ a nicer way to do it. Good to know."

"Otherwise she's been kind, all things considered. Except when I get homesick, or start thinking about… you know. Then she gets annoyed and assigns me something really hard to do. I've never worked so hard in my life! I guess it's her way of distracting me. I mean, she's not really the hugging type."

I studied her carefully, but I'd seen a lot of traumatized students in my time, and Hope didn't fit the profile. She was being very candid, and of course she was unhappy, but she wasn't being broken in the way that I'd feared Newt might try training her. A tight little spot in my heart had unknotted, and I vowed again that I had to find out what had happened to this girl, what the hell she'd done and why. If there were any way to save her, I'd find it.

"Have you managed to remember anything more?" I asked. "I mean, have you figured out which memories are missing?"

Hope set another marshmallow on her stick, watching it burn. "Sort of? I mean, she didn't know me before, but she can get in my head and follow the threads. Near as we can figure, I've forgotten everything after talking to Luna on the day it happened. Then there's a few memories here and there before that that I feel like I should know, but there's just these blanks. Mostly it has to do with Ellasbeth and Uncle Aiden. I remember everything else — my parents, my childhood, my schoolwork, my research, my friends… it's weird. It's like someone took an ice cream scoop and scooped out the memory of that day."

"What _do_ you remember of that day? You said you talked to Luna?"

"Well, fought with her, really. She's an awesome roommate, but she's got a really… uh… forceful personality, you know? Anyway, we… uh…" Hope blushed. "A few weeks ago I kind of walked in on her watching a naughty movie, and she roped me into watching it with her, and…"

"I can guess," I said, hiding a smile.

"She was all thrilled, like she'd brought me to the dark side — cause she's bi, right? And I'm, I mean, I hadn't really thought of her in that way before? And I'm not sure I do? But it was still fun?" Hope shook her head, confused. "I might have done it again, except she was kind of pushy, and I didn't want to lead her on, and, I dunno. I think I probably did lead her on… it was my fault for letting her convince me to stay. Now I just felt weird about it. More because she's a friend, not… a _friend with benefits_ kind of friend." Hope's eyes met mine, looking relieved when she saw I was nodding in sympathy. Hope wasn't the first student I'd met who had found herself confessing to me. I might have been a professor from hell, but I did know when a student just needed an ear.

"I've spoken with her. She's pissed off that nobody's told her anything about you. She misses you."

"Does she know… about any of this?" Hope asked, her sweeping arm indicating her current fucked-up situation.

"No, she thinks you died. I wasn't sure what to tell her." I tilted my head, watching her as she returned her forlorn gaze to her smoldering marshmallow. I wasn't sure when I'd get to talk to her again, and something was bugging me about the whole sordid tale Adrian and I had pieced together. Jessalyn hadn't spoken of Hope as some kind of black sheep, but a much-loved member of the family. Except for fighting with her mother… "I spoke to Jessalyn, too," I said, watching her.

Hope's face crumpled as she fought tears. "I miss her _so much_. She was like a sister. We lived in the same house, hell, we shared a bedroom for years—" Her voice broke as my suspicion was confirmed.

"She was so mad about the accident that she went vigilante. She hired two goons, leaned on the FIB, and tracked down the person she thought was responsible," I said, smiling at the memory. "Of course, that person was me. So she didn't quite get to go all Inigo Montoya on me, but she sure tried to be a badass about it."

"_Vigilante_?" Hope made a noise that was half sob, half chuckle as she contemplated it. "Jess is such a little bunny. It must have been hysterical. Did she try swearing at you?"

"She winced every time."

Hope giggled again, wiping her eyes. "I used to swear at her, but she never could bring herself to say anything back. She had all these stupid code names instead. Different sweets. Fudge for fuck, and peppermint for shit, that sort of thing."

"She said you fought with your mom a lot?"

Hope waved that aside. "Oh, sure. But Mom fights with everyone. She likes to hear herself shout. She's kind of like Beth that way. Difference with Mom is, the more she shouts, the less anyone takes her seriously." Hope's face abruptly crumpled again. "I can't believe she's gone. In my head, we just talked a few days ago. Mom wanted to send me another phone, _again_, because I'd lost mine somewhere, and I told her I wanted to check in the lab first, 'cause I'm always… losing… things…" She trailed off and buried her face in her hands, crumpling up in misery.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't be making you relive all this," I said quietly, glaring at anyone who happened to be watching us. Eyes quickly looked away. A glance at Newt told me that she and Ash were still in conversation. Ash was looking very grave indeed, slumped in his chair. Newt looked stern and unyielding. I had the feeling she was chewing him out over something, and he had ceased to defend himself. Uh oh.

"It's OK." Hope scrubbed at her eyes furiously, embarrassed at shedding tears in front of demonic onlookers. "She doesn't want me to talk about it, not to her. She just gets upset, too, and I don't like it when she's upset. She won't tell me what I did. Do you know?"

"That's the thing. I can't figure out what you actually did," I said. "But I can tell you what we pieced together the day of the accident. You, ah, know you're adopted, right?"

Hope cleared her throat. "Yeah, it was kind of obvious. And I knew they were elves, too. I knew they were doing research to cure Rosewood, and I was one of their cures."

I looked at her in astonishment. "The whole family knew about this?" I asked.

"Well, yeah. It was all a big secret to everyone outside the family. But they were good people. They really believed in what they were doing. It's why I wanted to do it too, why I went to work for Uncle Aiden. It's important, and it will save lives, even if it's illegal."

"Whoa! They were letting_ you _do the Rosewood research?"

"Yeah… I mean, it wasn't about the cure anymore; it was about comparing different witch genomes to see if we could identify the other factors. I'm not really _cured_-cured, it's just the most fatal enzyme's been suppressed. Finn's lab tried all kinds of different gene therapies, but Trent's labs figured out the genius idea of sticking the suppressor gene into the mitochondria themselves. It works great, but it means that men can't pass on the cure. We wanted to see what else was happening and maybe come up with a better cure, but we didn't have anything that was nearly ready to test yet."

I let her babble on about the technical details for a while, thinking furiously. Besides, it wouldn't hurt the demons around us to know that the cure was being worked on by elves — that if they wanted their salvation, they'd have to turn to their old enemies. As she described her life, the sense that I was wrong, so very wrong about what had actually happened kept growing. Whatever the elves had been up to, it hadn't been about raising this young woman as a sacrifice to Zaebos. She was beloved… pampered, even, and clearly loved her family deeply.

I couldn't reconcile it with what I also knew to be true — that Ellasbeth was ready to turn her family friend over to Zaebos to save her child. I did notice that Dear Cousin Beth didn't figure much into Hope's narrative, other than Hope mentioning that they didn't really see eye to eye. But given how Hope spoke about her family, I couldn't imagine them going along with it. And Jess's ignorance… was her father really in on it? I mean, her dad had sent an elven assassin after me. But… now that I thought about it, I had only Ellasbeth's word on that, too. Had Ellasbeth been totally honest with me? The more I thought about it, the more I began to doubt what she'd told me was entirely accurate.

Then Hope wanted to know about what I thought happened. I tried to piece it together for her, explaining about Delores. Hope was shocked to learn her birth mother was alive, having been told she'd had an immune disorder and died of an infection in the hospital. I blinked at her, feeling a sudden chill. My birth mother had died of an infection, in the hospital, shortly after I was born.

At least… _that's what I'd been told._

I shook off the sudden feeling of foreboding. Surely not. And I hadn't been raised by elves in disguise; Dad and his second wife were witches, through and through. Still, the coincidence bothered me.

When I got to the part where I'd tried (and failed) to explain how my messing in the lines with Ash had triggered Hope to do whatever she'd done, Hope just looked miserably confused. "So I tapped the lines and blew everyone up?" she said, face scrunched once again. "That's… I just don't get it."

"Neither do I," I said, staring at her thoughtfully. From everything she'd said, I knew Hope was not someone to fly into that kind of rage. "And Rachel didn't say it was a _bad _feeling, for all that it was momentarily overwhelming. Rachel said my signature was… for her, it was… well it was full of lust, but it was also a kind of yearning, a desire for completion. It was violent, but only because it was super strong, and she was fighting it. When she finally gave in… that's when the accident happened. I wasn't awake for it. Maybe hers was more violent."

"No, it was much calmer. Bittersweet," Ash said quietly, and I wondered how long they'd been listening in. "Longing. Fulfillment mingled with regret. Yearning for simplicity."

"_Nostalgia_," Newt said. "She flooded the lines with nostalgia. I remember it very clearly."

"There's something here that doesn't add up," I said, unable to put my finger on what was bothering me. We'd been treating this as Hope going into a righteous rage and blowing up people she thought had just betrayed her, but that couldn't be right. Her foster parents loved her. Her uncle, Aiden Finn, respected her, was training her to continue his work. None of them were treating her like a sacrifice. Perhaps the appearance of Delores was a shock to all of them. The Withons were there, and maybe they were the reason Finn was so angry that night — maybe he was angry on Hope's behalf… "A wave of nostalgia hits Hope and she taps a bunch of lines and blows people up, including the parents she loves? That just doesn't make any sense at all. We're missing something."

"Perhaps it will become clear when Brooke tells us what she knows," Ash suggested, sounding intrigued.

I groaned, not loving the reminder of what I'd agreed to do to bring that about. The woman who could answer my question was _right there_, and she wouldn't talk. It was maddening. "I guess we should go talk to Al, then," I said with a long-suffering sigh. This day just wouldn't end.

"Do we have your permission to carry on?" Ash asked Newt, voice heavy with sarcasm. "Or do I need to bring a babysitter?"

Newt smiled benevolently, giving us a dismissive vague little wave from her canvas throne. "Go on, dears. Have fun storming the Coven."

_Oh, geez._ "She really_ is_ a fan, isn't she?" I said to Hope.

"You have no idea," Hope replied, sounding aggrieved. "I think she went so far as to invent Rougen's life-sucking machine."

_Well, if you had that kind of time on your hands…_ "Everyone needs a hobby," I said. Newt really needed to get herself topside for a con now and then. Either she'd fit right in, or it'd be a bloodbath. I winced; probably both. "Could be worse. It could be Holy Hand Grenades and coconuts all the time."

Hope shrugged. "Maybe it is, and I'm just missing the references. I've never seen that one."

Newt brightened, and I had a feeling that was about to change. Poor Hope. Though perhaps unladen swallows would be a nice change, after dealing with 'inappropriate ants.'

I was hoping to make it out of Dalliance without talking to Brooke, knowing myself to be a really terrible liar, but she managed to corner Ash and I anyway, just before we reached the exit glyph. "Well…?" she demanded, managing a combination of haughtiness and curiosity and eagerness all at once.

"It's done." I tried moving past her, but she blocked my path.

"Done?" Her façade cracked, exposing the fear beneath. "Why aren't you taking me with you?" she said, voice rising. "You said—"

"Well, you wouldn't cooperate, so now there's a catch. Dali will fill you in. We'll be back later."

"You can't leave me here," she whispered. "You were supposed to buy me!"

I narrowed my eyes at her for a long, long moment. Her distress was very real, but… "Son of a bitch. You both knew I was coming, didn't you?" Brooke's face went blank, but I'd seen the brief wince. "He _ordered _you not to tell me what I wanted to know so he'd get his pitch in, didn't he? God damn it! Ash, get us the hell out of here, would you? Before I go back in there and break Dali's nose?"

"Oh, God. You have to take me with you. He'll _kill_ me if he finds out—"

"Are you kidding?" I forced a chuckle I didn't feel. "I swapped a couple of ducks, two chipmunks, and a handful of rodents for you. He'll hardly kill you now." But the look on her face made me relent a little. She was Dali's pawn in this game, and I couldn't enjoy her terror. "He promised he wouldn't damage you or let anyone else molest you. I made it part of the deal. We'll be back after dark."

Ash got us out of there before we had to listen to any more of her protests. I didn't like the woman, found what she'd done reprehensible, but could I really blame her for not defying Dali? More likely he'd realized their interests aligned, and he'd figured he'd had plenty to gain from me, even if he ended up swapping her. Or… perhaps they were working together now. I had only Dali's word for it, that he couldn't break her mind. Perhaps Brooke was out for vengeance, too.

And what had Newt and Ash been plotting?

And what was up with those elves?

Damn. I'd hoped coming to Dalliance would clear things up, but I was leaving more befuddled than ever…


	32. Uncomfortable Revelations

_Teensy spoiler warning if you haven't read EA: you'll learn the canon name of Al's wife. (Which reminds me to go back and change it in Heart to Heart. Or not. *Lazy*)_

**In Which Ash Cleans Up and Comes Clean**

We misted away, reappearing in our library. Ash hadn't spoken more than a few words since the tulpa, and I was desperately curious about what he and Newt had been discussing silently during my conversation with Hope. Or maybe they'd been trading recipes, and he was just irked with me for not taking the easy route and having Dali torture Brooke, instead. If only my life were that simple.

He was shaking his head as we materialized. "You've made everything way too complicated, Evie," he said.

Was he referring to the latest clusterfuck revolving around Brooke, or the mess I'd made of my whole damned life? Either way, I agreed. I bared my teeth at him in reply. It wasn't a happy grin, more the grin of someone who has to grin to hide the fact that she's _this fucking close_ to sticking a knife to the next obstacle in her way, living, demonic, or undead. "Yes, yes I have. _Not _my fault," I said sweetly, through gritted teeth. "Anyway, it all depends on whether Pierce is still alive. Otherwise we'll have to try to recruit Vivian, and I know how _that's _going to go."

"It just has the ring of vengeance about it, which doesn't seem like your style," he replied.

"I'd think you'd appreciate that."

Ash humphed, face grim. "What's next?"

"We see if Al's killed Pierce or not. I hope he's alive, but I'm not holding my breath. Not after Al found out about Rachel."

Ash grunted again with a half-shrug. "You distracted him. There's a good chance the witch is alive." Ash ran a hand through his hair, clearly agitated and distracted. "You think he'll agree to help?"

"Pierce? I don't know. Maybe? Rachel's shunned. She'll need to get that removed, or chances are good she'll be stuck in the ever after, like me." Ash's eyes flicked over to me again at that. I waited for him to take advantage of that line, to retort that I was enjoying every minute of my exile thanks to him, but he didn't. He was really off his game right now, wasn't he? "And given what happened, Pierce is going to want to keep Rachel as far away from Al as possible."

"Mmm," Ash agreed. I watched him run his hand along a bookshelf and then stare at the dust like it was an alien substance that had just insulted his mother. An unexpected (to me, anyway) side effect of Ash's temporary death was the instantaneous death of all the slaves who'd been soul-bound to him. Ash had cleared out the sordid evidence before he told me, expecting that I'd be furious at him. Mostly I was relieved to be rid of the responsibility for the care and comfort of soul-damaged slaves, without having to perform active euthanasia. But the loss of the constant, silent background maintenance in our rooms was starting to show. "Of course, Al will probably _want_ her trapped here. What's his motivation to remove Rachel's shunning?"

I stopped my pacing, stymied. "Oh, shit. Good point."

"Pierce may cooperate with the others, but I doubt he'd let Al into his mind," Ash reminded me. I blinked with wide-eyed astonishment as he actually conjured a feather-duster and gave the shelves a quick once-over. _Ash? Doing menial tasks? What'll he do next, cook dinner?_

"So Viv's still probably the next stop after Pierce, anyway." _ Assuming she hasn't been chased out of town by an angry mob with pitchforks, or worse. _"If she doesn't agree… well, there's the backup plan."

"Backup plan?" He reshelved a book, taking the time to straighten and align them just so. His random attack of domesticity was unnerving me.

"Either dipping into Newt's stored souls, or just turning Brooke over to Dali for his version of interrogation." I sighed. "I suppose that would be easier, but the information we need is detailed, and there's no guarantee she'll spill it even under pressure. Not to mention… I doubt I could live with myself afterward."

Ash made another noncommittal noise, not turning to face me. "You'd be surprised with what you can learn to live with."

I stared at him a moment, imagining him for the first time as a young man, confronted with an impossible decision like this. Had he ever been such a young man? Had there ever been a time when he would have hesitated? I had to believe that I wasn't going down that road myself… and that Ash wasn't actively leading me. "Am I doing the right thing, Ash?"

He turned and I almost flinched when he burst out laughing, even though he sounded quite delighted. "Evie, sweet,_ you're_ asking _me_…?"

_Smartass._ "Well, what would _you_ do?"

Ash cocked his head, thinking. A little smile still played in the corner of his mouth. "Let's see… can't crack her head, need information yesterday… no, I wouldn't use torture." He turned on the smolder as he raised my chin with a fingertip. "I'd _seduce_ it out of her."

_Ooooohhhh_, the thought of him turning that wicked gaze and bedroom voice on someone else set Therese off, and she growled before I could stop her. Ash chuckled and gave me a satisfied smirk, as I tried to pretend I was just clearing my throat. "Except unlike _me_, Brooke is smart. She wouldn't fall for_ that_. Then what?"

Ash pursed his lips in a mock _you-doubt-my-prowess?_ pout. But at least he gave it a moment's thought, setting aside whatever else was on his mind. "Probably what you're doing. Except I would be far more gleeful about it."

"So there's not some totally obvious solution I'm missing, here…?"

He dropped his hand and stepped away, eyes searching the library without really seeing it. "No… killing her would be satisfying, but if you want the information in time to do anything about it, I can see no other alternative. Not that it'll matter in the end." Something in his tone made me give him another sharp look. But he'd already turned away to pull out his calling mirror. "I love how you're so certain that Adrian will be down with this plan, Evie," Ash said, though his amusement sounded a little forced.

"I… should I tell him? What we're really doing?"

"Depends." Ash contemplated his mirror, a huge, gaudy, ornately etched thing that I could get lost gazing into. Ash had spent hours and hours layering additional safeguards and beautiful decorations over the basic design, but I had the impression he wasn't really looking at them. It was an oddly long moment before he continued. "You'll lose him if you don't confide in him. But you may break him if you do."

Something in Ash's grim prediction set my hackles on edge. This was about more than Adrian. "What?"

"In his heart, he's still a Coven member. It's all he's got left. You force him to destroy it, willingly, and he might break." Ash traced a line, following it down through the layers of designs, expression serious. "If you betray him, you lose his friendship. But he can blame you, and know in his heart that he's remained true to himself."

Heartsick, I sat down. I had so few friends, so few allies. But I suspected Ash was right. I also knew I couldn't lie to Adrian outright. Did I have it in me to feign ignorance, when the demons turned on the others and blew up the Coven? But how much worse would it be if he saw through me?

"And if you don't tell him, it might break _you_," he added quietly. "Although… as I said, you'd be surprised what you can learn to live with. It's all in the lies you tell yourself." He traced another line, the blood red glow of the mirror lighting his features with a demonic cast. Appropriate. "What is the most useful lie, here? Do you love him enough to tell him the truth? Or is the loving action to protect him at all costs, even if you lose his regard? Is lying the coward's way out, or the noble thing to do?"

I shivered as I considered what Ash was asking. "I don't know. Taking the Coven out… I have no idea if it's really the right thing to do. If it is… if I were _confident_ that it is… I wouldn't have to lie to him."

Ash gave a little sigh. "And if your life depended on his doing what you need him to do?"

I thought about that for a moment. "It kind of does, I think."

Ash raised his head, face blank and eyes cold. "I'm in his head, right now. He's lost, confused, and defenseless against my influence. I could twist his thoughts, gently tease and nudge and play on his emotions until taking out the Coven is his own idea, not yours. I would do this to ease your burden, _Saenat_. Shall I?"

I shook my head, swallowing. "No. Please don't do that. I… respect him too much for that."

He returned his gaze to the mirror. "It's not a matter of respect, but expediency. He'd never know."

"_I'd_ know." I put my hand on his, uncertain what this discussion was really about, but sensing that it was as important to him as it was to me. "You're right, though. It'd be so easy to just take the choice away from him. But I'd want the choice. And I'd want the choice to be _mine_, free of influence. You know that. It's why you let me choose to stay here."

That got me an eloquent grimace. "That _sucked_," he said. "I hated every fucking minute of that conversation."

I smiled. "I know. And I'm not looking forward to having it with Adrian, either. Or Pierce. Or Al. Or Vivian. God, the odds of them all agreeing is about a million to one."

Ash gave me a crooked smile in return. "Nothing saying you can't use persuasion, blatant manipulation, or blackmail," he offered.

"True." I studied him for a moment longer, seeking the truth behind his words. He wasn't lying, but there was definitely something big he was keeping from me. "If I stop and think about everything, I'll curl up and cry and nothing will get done. Let's just talk to Al and get this over with. If Pierce is dead, so's the plan, and then I don't have to betray anyone."

Ash gazed at me a few seconds longer, inscrutable as always. "As you wish, _Saenat_," he said finally, clearly reluctant. Even more slowly, he returned his attention to the mirror, and I watched him close his eyes and swallow before fitting his hand to the glyphs. His reluctance and weird mood wasn't all because of me, then… or Newt. Maybe Ash was dreading this talk with Al.

Why? Had something happened? Well, of course something had happened. I'd given Al a mental smackdown, forcing Ash to take over as my _yazataksh_ again. Was it more than that? So much had happened to me today, I'd had to push aside a ton of personal shit to focus on solving Hope's problem. But now that we knew what came next, I went over what else had gone on since my reunion with Ash yesterday.

God, had it only been a _day_?

I didn't really want to think about Al and all he'd done to me, but I had to wonder what they'd talked about after Adrian had summoned me. Had they fought over Al's attack on my mind? Or about Al's treatment of Ash, screwing him over and stranding him on the surface?

And why had Ash been ill, anyway? Demons don't get sick, ever. And it wasn't some latent infection —Al had healed Ash from all scratches he'd sustained on the surface. At least, I assumed he had — hadn't been a scratch on Ash when we'd made love, apart from a slightly inflamed cut on his shoulder. Then I remembered — I'd asked Adrian, and he'd said it was part of what Ash wanted to tell me himself. Right before he'd launched into the weirder aspects of demon reproductive physiology. About venom and cell phones and all the other stuff…

"He'll see us," Ash said, and there was something about the way he was avoiding my eyes that raised red flags. "Pierce is alive."

Relief made me relax, but only for a moment. "Did you guys fight?" I asked.

"Yeah. " Ash didn't even look surprised that I'd figured it out, though he had his blank face on once again. "Let's go before he changes his mind."

"Ash… what's wrong? What did you fight about? What he did to you?" Ash hadn't indicated that he gave a damn about Al stranding him on the surface, bizarre as it seemed to me. But then, Ash hadn't indicated much of _anything_ during that uncomfortable conversation. In fact, Ash hadn't really been himself since he'd… well… _died_.

Ash rose, mouth twisting into a grimacing smile that didn't reach his eyes. He looked like he was going to blow the question off, but then he ducked his head, looking so much like a chagrinned young man that I felt my heart give a little quirk. "Let's just say… irreconcilable differences, where you're concerned," he said.

_Irreconcilable differences._ I snorted. Yeah, I guess Al and I were definitely in need of a divorce—

_Newt threw her head back and laughed. "Awwwwww," she drawled. "Poor little Gally. He's had such a rough day. Abandoned by both his lovers, alienating his only other ally. No wonder he's still hiding under his covers."_

I was the ally. Rachel was the lover. I'd asked at the time about the other; Ash said he'd tell me later. Gobsmacked, I boggled at Ash, but seeing instead what had been staring me in the face all this time. The_ true_ source of Al's jealousy, his antipathy toward me. "Wait… you? You… you and… _Al_?"

Ash struck a belligerent pose, but it was ruined by the wince in his eyes. "What? Is it so hard to imagine?"

"Well… _yes_!" I stared at him, trying to wrap my head around the concept. _What—? When—? How long—? Why didn't you tell me? _"You? And _Al_? _ All this time_?"

"No! Not _all _this time. It's… complicated." Ash seemed to deflate, running a hand through his hair. "Look, don't read too much into it. We fucked, that's all."

Ash was lying; I was a hundred percent certain of it. I'm sure the face I was making wasn't flattering, but it might have helped to see what it was… because I had no idea how I was supposed to be feeling about this revelation. Jealousy and outrage that he'd kept this from me tried to edge their way past the confusion, but the confusion was still too strong. My mouth just kept spluttering helplessly. "You… just… but… _recently_?"

"No! Evie, we're both well over seven thousand years old. It was a long time ago."

OK, sure, that made sense, centuries without demon women, demons had to get their kicks, they all slept around, they could look like who or whatever they wanted, this wasn't a shock… right? I hadn't really wanted to believe Devi, but given Ash's sexual appetite, I had no reason _not_ to. But if it was _just fucking_, Ash wouldn't be so uncomfortable about me knowing, right? What the hell kind of relationships did demons have, over millennia? Could a relationship even last that long without ending in partners wanting to kill each other…? (Gee, that said volumes about my own view of relationships, didn't it?) "Is that… is that why he wanted you dead?"

Ash's eyebrows lifted. "When did he want me dead?"

"The trial! He tried to steal your stuff and land you with the job of being Newt's familiar?"

"Oh, _that_." Ash batted the idea away with his hand. "I mean, yeah, he'd have won all my shit for a few centuries, but I'd have gotten it back. Happened before. It was a game."

"A_ game_?" My face went numb and slack. I could just about hear the sickly thwap of my ego slapping the floor. I'd risked my life for Ash by taking on Newt, and it had just been some stupid, sick game?

"Oh, hell. Now you're going to freak out, aren't you?" Ash folded his arms, jiggling his foot restlessly, eyes still darting around the room. "Yes, it was a game. We've played it for millennia. Why do you think I owned most of his shit when I kidnapped you? He wouldn't have sold his precious conservatory to just _any_ demon."

His conservatory, his most beloved possession, his wife's beautiful, living memory. Of course he'd only sell it to someone he… knew_ intimately_. I wanted to throw my hands up and scream into his face, shake him until his little weasel brains rattled in his skull. "He told me Newt would fucking kill you! That she didn't like you!"

"Aw, Newt?" Ash waved his hand again. "She doesn't hate me. No more she hates everyone else here, anyway. If you'd gone along with him, Al would've sold you to her, in exchange for me. And I'd be in his debt for another century or two."

It was so simple. Ash had never been in _real_ danger. Knowing what I was, Newt would have swapped Ash for me in a heartbeat. Al had played me beautifully. If I'd believed him, I'd belong to Newt right now, and my life would probably be hell. But perhaps my mind wouldn't have been fucked up, and Hope wouldn't have gone kablooie… and I wouldn't be tied to this _maddening_ demon, who still refused to meet me halfway in this farce of a relationship!

"Neither of us could believe what you did. But you changed the nature of the game. It was never serious, and then… it was_ deadly_ serious."

I jammed my hands into my pockets, belligerent and bewildered. Al had been a total ass to me the first time around, but it hadn't been personal. Then... what? He'd gauged our relationship, been… jealous? And slashed us apart. He'd_ implied _it was being freaked out by a resemblance to his dead wife that had been the motivation for it… but it couldn't_ just_ have been that. Why hadn't I seen it had to be more than that? Al always had more than one motive for anything he did, even if the motive was vicious and petty. And when it came to matters of the heart, Al was a fucking teenager. Hadn't I watched him use me to make Rachel jealous? Al was usually a subtle bastard, but Rachel had really unhinged him. "It was _way more_ than just fucking, wasn't it?"

"Algaliarept…" Ash had dropped his arms, and his hands sort of wandered about aimlessly. He finally settled one on the mirror, staring into it at his own reflection. His voice, quiet and layered with years of emotion, left no doubt that I was right. "Al was my _yazataksh._"

"Your _yazataksh_…" I'd known that… and now I knew how intimate the bond could be. "You were _lovers."_

"Something like that." Ash's eyes brushed my gaze tentatively, flitting away again. "It's… complicated."

_Complicated_… right. I imagined Ash, a teenager… a mere boy… being bent by a cruel, manipulative Al, who'd had full access to his mind, his powers. "He took advantage of you." I was amazed that I had depths of loathing still unexplored, but Al was continually finding new ways to plumb them.

"What? No!" His reply was quick and easy, even slightly outraged at the suggestion. "Of course not! Celfnnah wouldn't have stood for_ that_!" Ash chuckled. "She'd have skinned him alive."

"Celfnnah?"

"Al's wife. No, he and I… it was centuries later, after he had to — after her death." Ash traced a winding pattern on the mirror, and the darkness layered with the blood red swirled in the wake of his finger. "Off and on again, over and over."

My blindsided brain flailed. Where to go from here? I wanted to go back and recatalog all my previous interactions with Al, looking for the blatantly obvious signs I'd missed. I wanted to wallow in my own bitter jealousy — how could I hope to compete with Al, who'd known Ash inside and out over the millennia? I wanted to kill Al for hurting him. And I wanted to know every goddamned humiliating detail.

"Look, Evie. It's over now." He traced another swirl, and the darkness glittered briefly. "By my hand today, it is over for eternity." I was shocked to hear the roughness in his voice.

"Over how? And what do you mean, _today_? It _wasn't_ over before? You just said it was years ago!" Damn, what had Ash been keeping from me all this time? I couldn't believe that Ash and Al had been working together, been… intimate… during the weeks I'd been here. There just hadn't been enough opportunity for it. Had there?

"No, you misunderstand. Our… games… our pattern." Ash unsheathed his claws, contemplating them as if they were cruel, killing blades. "We broke skin. All intimacy is over." His eyes met mine again, another brief caress. "I thought to protect you, _Saenat."_

Baffled, I asked, "How could pissing off Al protect me?"

"My venom is now deadly to him. Were it flowing within your veins, too…" Ash sighed, claws vanishing once more.

Great, more shit about venom. "But you don't want to mate with me. You've turned it all off." The true meaning of Ash's gesture, rendering himself, well, nonvenomous, suddenly struck me. Not only would I still be susceptible to Al's poison — or Dali's, or any other demon's poison, for that matter, being unbound — but Ash was now, for want of a better word, deathly allergic to Al. "So Al could get you if he wanted, and you couldn't get him back. You're vulnerable."_ Ash would die… though he'd be resurrected_, I reminded myself. _Still, not a pleasant way to go… not if a little scratch put him through hell the first time._

"He doesn't know that."

"How would me being allergic to Al protect me?" I asked, baffled. Ash would be resurrected, but if I had Ash's venom in me, I'd just curl up and die horribly if Al got me, right? Or something? I tried to recall what Adrian had told me about this shit, but I was too distracted at the moment to remember the details.

"And it's not that I don't _want_ to bind you," he added testily. His voice was bitter. His sigh rattled with frustration and annoyance.

"Ash…" I sensed him withdrawing as he turned away, done with this sudden attack of honesty. I decided to let it go for now. "Do I have to worry about Al, now?"

Ash gave me a sidelong amused glance. "You weren't, before?"

"More so than usual?" I clarified, annoyed. "Will he be vengeful for ... whatever you did?"

"No. He's too proud."

I blinked. Didn't pride usually work the other way? Maybe vengeance at this point would seem too much like begging for attention…? "But… we're about to ask him to help us crash the Coven. Can we trust him? Less than before you dumped him, I mean?"

"There was no relationship to 'dump!' For the love of little green apples, Evie! This isn't some soap opera!"

_Funny, it bears every resemblance to a soap opera, if you ask me… Dali thinks so too_. Ash gave me a sour look, probably catching that thought. "I don't know why the hell I told you all this," Ash grumbled, turning away again. "Look, if you bring it up, he'll be just as mortified as I am, and refuse to help you. Forget I told you, will you?"

_Right._ I closed my eyes, gearing up for a good session of counting to ten and not strangling him. I shouldn't punish him for being straight with me, given how rare that was. "I'm_ glad _you told me. I just need to know what's changed."

"Why should anything have changed?" Ash said, throwing up his hands. "It was a meaningless thing then, and it is meaningless now that it's over."

_Oh, please. _But part of me was hurt to hear him deny it. I mean, if he couldn't admit that he'd had deeper feelings about a relationship that had lasted literally thousands of years, why did I think he'd admit to anything deeper about a relationship of a mere few weeks? Thank goodness there was a more _urgent_ daunting, impossible task ahead of me. I definitely needed the distraction. "Fine. Life as usual, then. Expect no more than the usual amount of deception and treachery, and don't turn my back on him, but otherwise try to keep him as a potential ally. Got it."

Ash's relief that I was dropping the subject was almost palpable. His crooked smile didn't have its usual sparkle, though. "Exactly." His smile fled when I glared at him.

"Do you _want_ me to be on good terms with the bastard, Ash? Because after what he did to me and to you, that's asking a hell of a lot."

Ash shifted, gaze once more sliding away. "He's far more valuable to us as an ally. We need him. _You_ need him." Left unsaid, of course, was the rest of that sentence: _I need him_. His voice was a lot quieter when he added, "And of the two of us, who has wounded you more deeply, _Saenat?"_

And if I couldn't forgive Al, how could I forgive Ash? Fuck, he'd been listening into my thoughts again just now, hadn't he?_ And why on earth does he think I need Al? Oh, right._ "Do you still think he's going to hold to his bargain and_ teach_ me? Are you out of your mind?"

"I'll be your _yazataksh_," Ash reminded me. "You anchor. Your shield. But don't you remember_ why_ you decided on Al in the first place?"

I hissed through my teeth, stung and furious. I'd been waiting all fucking day for him to acknowledge my confession of love, and he was going to turn it around to get me to work with Al again? "Seriously? That's how you're going to use what I said this morning? To convince me to forgive your _ex-boyfriend_ for mangling my head?"

Ash's face went blank again. "If you wish to see it that way, love," he said, voice empty of anything other than disinterest. "We should go, before he changes his mind."

_Smooth, Evie. Real smooth._ But pride kept me from doing anything other than mimicking his blank face, trying like mad to not be the messed-up, seething ball of frustration and hurt that I was. "Yeah. Right. OK, Ash."

But perhaps it wasn't anger he was feeling, after all, because his hand closing on my upper arm was unexpectedly gentle. "Evie." He hesitated a little. "Yes."

"Yes_ what_?" I snapped, not looking at him.

"Your question. In the collective after we made the tulpa. The answer is yes."

It had the ring of both concession and confession, but we were off, enfolded by the tingle of the ley lines, before I could even recall what my question had been. _Damnit, Ash! You're not allowed to do that when we have fucking complex negotiating to do! If this is your way of getting in the last word—_

I got nothing from him, couldn't even tell if he was listening. Ass! Now I'd be distracted trying to figure out what the hell he'd been referring to.


	33. The Forgotten Story

_Sorry for taking so long to post this one, but it's got Al in it, and he always insists that I get him juuuust right, the perfectionist little peacock._

**In Which Al Repays a Debt**

Al was in his spelling kitchen, stirring. I could have predicted the two curses he'd have going: his Englishman persona, and curses for healing physical damage. He was freshly showered and wearing a slightly threadbare forest green robe, and looked so completely like a modern, ordinary man with his bare feet and damp hair that I nearly didn't recognize him. Pierce was nowhere in sight, but Al also had the beginnings of a black eye, and a very, very surly expression on his face. Clearly Pierce wasn't dead, or even helpless, at the moment.

The mother of all awkward silences fell on our little trio.

"Uhh. Where's Pierce?" I asked finally.

Al huffed and added something green to one of the cauldrons. He stirred it with unnecessary vigor, then tossed the glass rod carelessly onto the scarred, ancient workbench. "Why?" he asked, voice a rough snarl.

I looked at Ash, but Ash was looking even more uncomfortable than I felt. I looked back at Al, and realized that I'd have to spend another hour explaining, pleading, cajoling and bargaining with him on top of all the other shit I'd had to put up with today. But unlike Dali, this demon didn't hold any power over me, and frankly… "Because you _owe_ me, Al!"

Al didn't protest, just picked up a bottle, poured a measure of the liquid into a measuring cup, dumped into the other cauldron, then took a long pull from the bottle himself. Slamming it down, he stared at it. "How do you figure?" he asked, voice low and rough.

I didn't reply, just stared at him until he looked back at me, his red eyes meeting mine with reluctance. I was expecting a flood of enmity to fill me, but it didn't. Al looked tired and defeated. For all his angry, abrupt movements, there was a defeated slump to his shoulders, a sense of simply going through the motions that could collapse at any moment.

"You owe me," I repeated.

He lost the staring contest, closing his eyes to escape my stare. "What do you want?" Al asked, in the exact tone I'd used on Dali not an hour earlier.

"What do_ you_ want, Al?" My tone was gentler than I'd intended, but even as I said it I realized that I meant it. I'd intended to hang on to my anger, but my discussion with Ash had just left me tired. We'd all been through enough in the past week, and berating him now just seemed like kicking him when he was down. He'd played games with all of us, and what had it netted him? He'd lost two lovers and his only other ally, just as Newt had said. He'd_ lost_. We'd_ all_ lost.

"Nothing. I want nothing," he replied, turning away to add another ingredient to one of the bubbling cauldrons. I stopped him quickly with a hand to his wrist.

"You probably don't want to look like a toad, or whatever mugwort would do to that persona curse," I said, letting a little smile peek out. I was no earth witch, but I'd stirred both of those curses a dozen times a day when I'd worked with Al. And even Al should've known better than to try stirring two curses at once.

He glared at me, then at his two curses, and grunted, jerking his arm away from me without heat. "Indeed." He motioned at the cauldrons, and a bubble popped into place around them. Everything within, including the flames from the burners, froze in place. I stared a moment, trying not to be impressed, as I tried to work out how the hell he'd done that. "Doesn't change my answer. I want nothing from either of you."

I tore my eyes away from the frozen flames, the academic in me still craning its neck over my shoulder. "Bullshit."

He turned to face us with a snarl. "What do you want with Pierce? What use is he to you? Or did Rachel send you to bludgeon me into freeing my familiar, now that you have leverage over me?"

I scoffed, but I realized in the next moment that this was just Al's way of trying, once again, to get me to tell him about Rachel and her motives. I guess I could've held it over his head, but I considered his own question seriously. What _did _I want from Al, anyway? To continue the animosity? I had been ready to hate him forever, but now that Ash had revealed the depth of their former relationship, to do so now just seemed petty. Ash and _Al_… geez, it felt so _weird_ to think of them together, in that way. I felt like I should acknowledge it and respect it, somehow, for Ash's sake if not Al's. Would Ash really want me to hurt Al any further?

I turned the eye-roll into a simple speculative glance at Ash. There had to be some way to advance the old olive branch, in a manner that allowed Al to save face. Of course it'd be up to me to make that first move, as always. Well… I could just _give_ him the information he wanted. It'd knock him off guard, in a good way, and that was always fun. I wasn't going to let Al into my head, not again, but Ash had just returned from an extended vacation in my mind. "Ash… when we made the tulpa, did you see the meeting with Rachel in my head?"

He shook his head. "No. I did look, but it's a blank for me, too." I cursed. Ash tilted his head, clearly wondering what I was up to, and added, "But Adrian was there, right?"

And Ash had access to Adrian's memories. _Perfect! _"Did I really agree to let Rachel curse me?"

Ash looked blank for a moment as he presumably opened a mental connection with his familiar. "Yes, initially." Ash gave me a nonplussed look. "What does this have to do with anything?"

Al looked like he was wondering the same thing, but at least he'd straightened from his slump. "It matters," I said simply. "It matters a lot to me, to know why I'd do it. If I'm ever going to make a deal with Al again, I want to know why I agreed to keep such a secret from him."

Al shifted weight, looking surlier, but I could tell from his agitation that he was hiding interest. Ash looked off into the distance again, consulting Adrian's memory. "Rachel offered you freedom, you refused. You argued with her for awhile, she told you about accidentally drawing a line through Al—"

Al blinked. "It was an accident?"

"She said…" Ash flicked his gaze to me, questioning. I nodded. Ash shrugged and directed the next bit to Al. "She said she was hurt, and frightened, and didn't realize what it would do to you. She's certain you'll never forgive her. Evie told Rachel she at least owed you an explanation. Rachel… she said she needed time, time away from you and Pierce and the rest of the Ever After."

"How are they hiding her?" Al asked, voice surly. "Is it an elven shackle?"

"Yes," Ash replied, and Al hissed in fury, his fist smashing a wooden box and sending a little mushroom cloud of grey dust into the air.

"I'll kill him! I'll murder that fucking elf! How_ dare_ he hobble her like that!"

"It was voluntary," Ash said. "Adrian remembers watching her twirling and playing with it, but at no time did she try to get it off. Evie told her she was crazy for crippling herself like that, particularly if they were going to go do something so dangerous—"

"Where?" Al growled, but I cut Ash off before he could answer. "No. We're not telling you where she is or what she's doing. That wasn't the point of bringing it up."

"Then what is your point?" Al had pulled one of the metal utensils from the table, and his white fingers were twisting it into a shiny little pretzel. "To rub her betrayal in my face?"

"Ash, how did she convince me to keep things a secret?"

Ash shook his head, shrugging. "She begged you not to tell him. You didn't agree until she swore up and down that she'd talk to Al, after she finished the road trip."

Al folded his arms, regarding us with a cool, blank expression. "You still agreed," he said.

"Well…" Ash's expression went distant, and his eyes and lips moved as he did a mental fast-forward. "Let's see… Evie talks to Adrian for awhile, blah blah blah feelings, Ceri comes in with the curse… Ah. There, see, she changed her mind. She argues with Ceri about you… Ceri argues back, then Quen pounces on her, and they force her to take the curse." Ash squinted at the memory only he could see. "I thought you said Al taught you how to punch, Evie."

"Shut up. Quen's a fucking ninja." Besides, how much was I supposed to have learned in a week, when Al was only using the opportunity to whale on me to make himself feel better? I might not remember the event, but Quen _was_ a professional, after all.

Al was looking suspiciously intrigued, despite himself. "Why was Ceri so insistent…?"

"Ceri said you'd only fuck everything up if you knew Rachel was still alive. Evie disagreed and defended you. Ceri said Rachel still needed to escape you if she could. Whether your intentions were motivated by selfishness or nobler feelings, or even a desire to protect her, the end result would be the same, that… oh, that's poetic. I quote: _Al has a heart, but his idea of love is a gilded cage and clipped wings._"

Al was staring open-mouthed with astonishment. "Ceri…" he breathed, and there was a profound sadness in his voice. "Oh, Ceri." He turned away from us, head bowed. I picked my jaw up off the floor, realizing that Al must have loved his familiar, in his way, though he'd still kept her against her will. And perhaps Ceri was not so vindictive as Ash's words made her sound. There had to be a reason that she didn't desire the utter annihilation of the Ever After, or vengeance on Al particularly.

"Thanks, Ash," I said, feeling a profound relief. I'd made Rachel promise to talk to Al before I'd agreed to forget? That sounded a lot more like me. And I could see Ceri acting to protect Rachel. And the rest of it… this was perfect for my purpose, better than I'd hoped.

"Sure, anytime…?" Ash was looking between us, clearly wondering why I'd brought this up in the first place.

Al had pulled himself together at my words. I knew we had about ten seconds before he cursed us out of his kitchen, damn the consequences. "Ceri's right though, isn't she? You _would _try to manipulate Rachel into being stuck here if you could, wouldn't you?" I asked Al. Al looked at me sharply, expression cold and eyes furious, but he didn't deny it. "You know that strategy's not going to work with her, right?"

"Are you seriously trying to give me _relationship advice_?" Al roared, outraged. "Get the hell out of my rooms, both of you!"

"She's got a point," Ash said, completely unperturbed. "Didn't work on me, either. Or Ceri, for that matter." He ducked easily as Al threw some kind of metal pyramid at him. It clanged against the opposite wall, chipping the stone before skittering across the floor noisily.

"You're one to talk! You think you haven't manipulated her?" Al pointed a trembling finger at me. "Or that your little bitch doesn't have you wrapped around her middle finger?"

I laughed as Ash put an arm around my waist. "Actually, he followed the sage old advice of being straightforward and honest with me. Shocked the hell out of me, let me tell you. He needed a truth amulet to get it right."

"Hey!" Ash protested, though it could have been the accusation of honesty that had earned his protest.

"Which brings me to my overall point. Al, Rachel's shunned again, thanks to Oliver going batshit yesterday So am I. For various reasons, it's in our best interest to un-shun everyone. To do that, we need Pierce." I fixed Al with a steely glare, but I couldn't help the half-smile playing across my lips. "Now are you going to loan him to us? Or are you going to refuse because you're worried the only way Rachel will settle for _you_ is if she has no better options?"

"No _better options__?!_" Al sputtered, red with indignation. "_Settle__?!_"

"Let me borrow Pierce. No conditions, no bargains or deals. Help me un-shun Rachel. Do it because it's the right thing to do, for everyone, including your own fat ego."

Al was looking at me like I'd suddenly sprouted antlers. His mouth opened and closed a few times, and his normally ruddy face was mottled with splotches of deeper crimson. I wondered if he'd strike me for my temerity, but I couldn't help the satisfied smirk on my face. This was far more satisfying than kicking him in the balls while he was down. This was vengeance squared, and I got to be a matchmaking busybody in the process. Win-win!

Al finally caved. "And you accuse _me_ of being a manipulative bastard," he growled, turning away. "Fine. Take him. Send him back when you're done."

_Yes!_ I couldn't help smiling with triumph. "Thanks, Al."

Al grunted, waving his hand over the bubble, which popped. The sound of bubbling potion filled the silent room. He added the mugwort to the proper potion this time, then paused in his stirring. He contemplated the bubbling cauldrons for a long breath. "An accident," he said quietly. "You're certain?"

Ash shrugged. "She _sounded _sincere."

"Rachel's never killed anyone in her life! Why would she start with _you_?" I asked.

Al gave me a sour look over his glasses, then crumbled a second handful of the dried herb to the pot. I suppose he had a point. I mean, I'd certainly wanted to kill him in the worst way, yesterday. I suppose the only thing that had stopped me was the fact that he wasn't mine to kill. That, and I wasn't really a killer either. Right? Given the proclivities of female demons, perhaps he was more surprised that she hadn't succeeded.

And Rachel certainly wouldn't have been quite herself, would she? "She betrays her boyfriend of five years by sleeping with you, then you make a tulpa together. Doesn't get much more intimate than that. She's got to be totally freaking out right now."

"I hadn't thought her such a coward," Al said, almost to himself.

"Al, she almost killed you. I can't_ imagine_ why she ran away, knowing how kind and forgiving you are."

Al added more of the pungent liquor to the healing curse. I suspected it was rum. Odd, when the curse I'd learned called for pure spirits, but Al was the expert curse-stirrer, not me. "She knows I'd forgive her," he said, voice grumpy and quiet.

"Does she…?"

Al slammed the bottle back onto the counter, and though the bottle didn't shatter, two smaller, skinnier containers danced and fell over. "Take the witch and get the hell out of here before I change my mind." He motioned to the central fireplace.

Pierce appeared, trussed like a turkey near the fire, wriggling valiantly and cursing a muffled, archaic blue streak through the gag. Amazingly, the witch was still in one piece, even if that piece had more than a few bruises. If the man had been tortured, Al must have either been very careful, or used magic that wouldn't leave a mark.

"You're going with Yvette, runt. She needs you to help revoke Rachel's shunning."

Pierce's eyes went wide with shock as I worked at ungagging him. Finally spitting out the sodden rag, he worked his lips a moment before he could speak. "What devilry is this?" he demanded.

"It's true," I said, as Ash helped me sever some of the knots with sharp tugs. "And I'm asking you nicely, as a favor to me, to not try to kill me, or Ash, or Al, once I untie you. We need your help, so we need you in one piece."

"Mistress Sinclaire," Pierce protested, clearly offended. "I'd no sooner plot _your_ demise than I'd plot my own sister's," he insisted. "But nothing shall stay my hand, if I should have the chance at that black devil before me!" He glared at Al, who had feigned disinterest in the entire matter by turning his back on us all.

"Pierce! Will you promise? Please?"

His angry blue eyes squinted briefly as he scrutinized my face. "You ask the impossible. How long am I to be bound by this promise?"

"Oh, _honestly_." I sighed with exasperation. I'd forgotten about this aspect of dealing with Pierce — he had a bit of a one-track mind, when he got on his vengeance kick. "How about two days? Can you manage a truce for forty-eight hours?"

"Aye, two days then, I so swear by my honor. But how do you propose we rescind a shunning?" We finished untying the witch, who quickly scrambled to his feet and struck a defiant pose. "To do so would require the cooperation of the Coven."

"Yup. We have four members on board already. We need your help. And maybe Al's, if he's willing."

Al started, nearly knocking over one of the cauldrons. "I beg your pardon?"

Ash and I laid out the basic problem of Oliver's insanity and Brooke's silence and the solution of booting them both out of the Coven, and taking the opportunity of un-shunning Rachel, Adrian, Vivian, and myself in the process. I left out the bit about destroying the collective entirely. Al was giving me a very penetrating look by the end of my little speech, a small wicked smile playing about the corner of his lips. But he didn't say anything aloud, even if he had guessed our real purpose.

"I see," Pierce said, when I'd finished. "But by my count, you have only_ three_ Coven minds, should I agree to this plan."

"Well… that's the bit where Al could help, if you let him." I explained how Ash and Adrian had come to an agreement that allowed Ash to become a Coven member.

Pierce took a step back, appalled. "Let that foul mudsill into my mind? Defile the Coven with demon filth?"

I sighed. "I'd say Brooke and Oliver did a pretty good job of defiling it themselves… hell, the Coven did a pretty good job of defiling its purpose centuries ago when your buddies sentenced you to death. Ash and Dali are already part of it now… what's one demon more?"

"Never!"

"Pierce, just… listen. I really, really don't want to bring Vivian into this. Because I know she won't agree, and then we won't have the six members we need. I need Brooke's information. Pierce, if we can't do this, I'm going to have to…" I swallowed. "…let Dali torture her."

"Brooke?" Pierce's eyes were cold. "I have no love for that woman, after witnessing her nefarious designs on Rachel. Let the demons have their way with her."

I had to step back, shocked. "You're OK with that?"

Pierce looked a little shamefaced at my disapproval. "Perhaps that crosses the line," he conceded. "But you know what that foul witch had planned for Rachel."

"Please, Pierce. We both know the Coven's corrupt. If we have to resort to torturing Brooke, those who are shunned will stay shunned forever. We'll all probably be stuck in the Ever After. Rachel being stuck here forever may be what _Al _wants, but is that what _you_ want for her?"

Al made a little choked sound that might have been a suppressed chuckle. Pierce gave him a furious look, then turned his glare on me. "That's hitting rather below the belt," he growled.

"I need this information, Pierce, not just for me and Rachel, but for Hope. I know you don't give a damn about Newt, but Hope's an innocent in all this. And what about Ellasbeth's baby? Ellasbeth is a worthless woman, but her child deserves a chance, not to be turned over to a creepy demon like Zee. Not to mention the Ever After could collapse if Newt doesn't show Rachel how to fix her line, and you know what consequences that would have for magic in the world. Pierce, I don't have any other options, here! What would you do?"

There was a long silence, broken only by the uneven crackle of the fire and the steady bubbling of Al's potions. Al added another ingredient to one of them, and it hissed. Pierce flinched a little at the noise, still staring daggers at me. "I see what a bind you find yourself in, Mistress Sinclaire. But—"

"Do it, runt, and I'll sell you to Yvette, here."

Both of us gaped at Al, who wasn't looking at either of us as he carefully moved one of the curses off the heat and onto an ornate wrought-iron trivet, using an oven mitt shaped like a chicken head. "Al, I—"

"I owe the woman restitution for a rather grievous wrong I did her. You'll do. Yvette? Will you call the debt between us settled, if I hand the runt over to you?"

"Um…" I was still trying to process the idea of Al_ giving_ me a valuable familiar like Pierce. _Holy shit._ It was as close to an apology as I'd probably ever get. "I guess so?"

Al was smirking at my confusion. I guess doing the unexpected to throw your opponents off balance was an effective strategy today, because I was floored by the gesture. But then, Al holding Pierce hostage wasn't winning him any brownie points with Rachel anyway.

Pierce was just as unprepared for the idea as I was, and he'd frozen in place with a bewildered expression. "My_ freedom_ from you, worm?" he asked, disbelief dripping from every word.

"Sure," Al said. "With the condition that you allow me entry into the Coven collective, and aid us in this quest to un-shun my itchy witch."

Pierce bristled. "Not _your_ witch, you ill-begotten lowlife," he growled. "Her heart ever belongs to me!"

"Hmm," Al said, enjoying himself immensely. "And yet, I stand here willing to help free her of an obligation to live here in the Ever After out of the goodness of my little black heart, and you agree to help her only if it buys you your freedom. So selfless and noble."

"I _would_ have agreed, you worthless heathen!" Pierce burst out, hands in fists at his side.

"_But you diiiidn't_," Al said, singsong voice mellow. "I do hope this gets back to Rachel. You'll tell her, won't you?"

I tried so hard to keep my face in a scowl, but secretly I was finding the fact that Al had stolen my strategy and successfully employed it on Pierce not five minutes later both amusing and a little flattering. And terrifying, because he'd done a much better job of it, leaving the man's ego in shreds rather than shaming him into doing good. "Not unless you promise never to fuck with _my_ love life again," I replied with feeling, not expecting for a moment that he'd agree.

"Oh, _absolutely_," Al replied too quickly, grinning to show his beautifully white, blocky teeth. "God forbid. What do you say, runt?"

"Do I have a choice?" Pierce growled. "Aye, fine. On the condition that Coven entry is the_ only _interference with my mind that I will allow. Yvette, will you force him to guarantee this?"

"Al?" I asked, but Al was already waving his hand dismissively. "Yes, yes, yes," he said. "I don't give a damn about anything else in his head. The opportunity to come along and fuck with the Coven is too good to pass up. You won't even notice I'm there."

I felt a weight lift from my chest, and took a deep, cleansing breath. "You're really giving Pierce to me, Al?"

"No, don't thank me. Once this affair is successfully concluded, he's all yours. Kill him, free him, do whatever the hell you want. He's _your _responsibility now."

I'd been smiling, but the word "responsibility" made me pause. "Oh." I looked Pierce over, seeing the man for what he was: a very, very dangerous witch who was skilled in demon magic, hell-bent on killing demons. "I guess that means I'll be responsible if he does manage to kill anyone, or teaches someone how to spindle…?" I said. "Shit. I'm sorry, Pierce, but I'm going to have to put some conditions on your freedom. You and Rachel might get to live in the sun, but I'm pretty much wedded to the Ever After, and I can't afford to get nailed with an Uncommon Stupidity charge."

Pierce gave me a surly look. "You had your chance to escape, Yvette."

"I did. I chose to stay. I chose to be _me_, not some shadow of my former self without my magical abilities. And I'm not apologizing for that, or for any of the other dubious decisions I've made lately. Ultimately… I think Rachel's going to choose that, too."

Pierce regarded me for a moment, expression softening as a brief expression of pain flickered across his features. He had to know he was losing her, no matter which choice she made. "You'll free me upon the morn?" he asked.

"Yes. Like I said, there's a few conditions, but I think you'll agree they're reasonable. I did it for Solange, I can do it for you."

"You _sold_ Solange to Ceri," Ash reminded me. "Technically, she's never been emancipated."

"Oh. But Ceri was never really emancipated, either," I said. "Is there a curse for that? I suppose I can just do another sale, wouldn't that work?"

"Emancipation is more permanent. If Ceri is ever recaptured, she and her property will revert back to the demon who last owned her."

We all looked at Al, who grinned. "You want to buy _another_ used familiar, love? I suppose I could sell you rights to Ceri, if you wish, but you'll understand if I must insist you collect her yourself." He smiled, eyebrow raised. "Though I must say, you've already acquired quite a collection already. Four Coven members! Perhaps you're trying for a complete set?"

I did a mental count. Brooke, Pierce… ah, yes, I owned Ash, didn't I, and he owned Adrian, sort of. I *did* own four Coven members. "This is fucking surreal," I said. "Ash, I'd rather just emancipate them all. Can you show me how?"

Ash gave me a beautiful bow. "Just as long as you don't try it on me,_ Beraxadtha_," he replied.

"Oh, _gag_," Al said. "Go on, get out of here. Summon me when you're ready. Take the witch with you, or I'm liable to damage him in the meantime."

_Damn… I can't believe that worked_, I told Ash silently. _Where's the catch? There's got to be a catch._

_I admit I don't see a catch at the moment, but knowing Al, he'll find one. Need I remind you, you still must convince Adrian of this plan?_For my part, I was still reeling with the idea that Al had even agreed, let alone given me Pierce. Could Al possibly have understood what I'd ultimately been doing in trying to offer him another olive branch? But how would he have known Ash had told me about their relationship? Probably he was secretly laughing at me, now that we'd gone, happy for the excuse to rid himself of Pierce. Al was, as always, a mystery to me.

As was Ash. At least I was in a better mindset now to ponder his cryptic statement. And his answer. What had I asked him, back in the collective, while Hope was trying so hard to make a tulpa?

Something about… something about the woods?

It thundered over me — I hadn't actually asked a question. He hadn't let me. But what I wanted to know… it was that moment when I'd thrown open my mind to him, and broadcast my simple delight at being home again, and he'd taken me into his arms and given me a gentle kiss, and said I was unique…

Was he being _sincere?_

_Yes._


	34. The Clod and the Pebble

_It gets better_...honest. The title's a William Blake poem, included at the end, to round out the list of Important Literary Couples mentioned here. *g* Could be worse. He could've compared her to Cathy and Heathcliff. *smirk*_  
><em>

**In Which Nothing Is Decided**

I wasn't entirely sure how to feel about this little revelation, given what I'd done immediately afterward. The memory of turning around and telling him to forget what he'd seen in my head, thinking it was all the same kind of manipulative bullshit he'd pulled on me as a teenager… what a smack in the face that had to have been. No wonder I'd landed in the hospital that night.

I felt Ash's familiar presence enfold me as we jumped back to our place, and tried to calm myself. His emotions were vague as ever, but I got the sense that he was pleased at the turn of events. Still, there was a distance to him, a distance that seemed to grow larger even as we reappeared in his spelling kitchen, his arm linked in mine. For my part, I was chewing a hole in my lip when we rematerialized. My mind was desperate enough to escape what I was thinking that I spent a good thirty seconds contemplating how the curse that transported us through a line knew that I was distracted and anxious enough to rematerialize me with my lip between my teeth.

How many times had he tried to show me a moment of sincerity, and I'd thrown it back in his face and called him a liar?

Did it even matter that he _was _a liar?

It had always surprised me, the shocking suddenness of his murderous anger, following a moment of intimacy. The first time we'd made love, and he'd turned around and tried to steal my soul. Even… even way back when, years ago, when I'd briefly seen his soul, and he'd nearly fried me for rejecting him. Hadn't I decided, that night in the woods, that my demon had been punishing his own momentary weakness rather than mine? How had I forgotten that insight?

And why had he brought it up just now? What was he trying to say? If he'd just been going for reassurance, his little confession had just had the totally opposite effect. The rational part of my mind looked at the emotional bits with annoyance, rolling its eyes. Ash had proven time and again that he was in this crazy relationship for the long haul; I really needed to stop questioning his motives and his feelings at every opportunity.

Ash had already wandered off, going over to speak quietly to Adrian as Pierce looked around, a somewhat disgruntled expression covering his bewilderment at this sudden shift in his status. I wondered if Pierce was excited, or angry, or perhaps even a bit disappointed at this turn of events — after all, he'd spent the better part of five years trying to win his freedom by killing Al, and had not only failed miserably, but Al had pretty much called him worthless by just giving him away on a whim. Or perhaps I was reading too much into his expression, and he was simply worried about how Rachel would fare without himself as a buffer between her and Al.

I was too queasy with anxiety to think of much to say, and there was bound to be many hours of hanging out with our uncomfortable little gang before sunset hit wherever the Coven's HQ was located. I supposed we'd spend the time stirring up trouble. Which reminded me, I was days behind on my community service curse. Ugh. Well, nothing stopping me from brewing another batch and stealing a dozen or so for myself, was there?

"Mistress Yvette, I wish to apologize for my deception. It weighed heavily upon my mind this past week."

I turned, feeling my heartache twisting around my gut. Of all the deceptions and bullshit I'd learned about in the past twenty-four hours, Pierce's was fairly low on the list. "It's OK. Thanks."

Pierce took my hand, expression grim. "No, please, let me. You must think I'm a wretched—"

"Pierce, I'm not mad at you. You and Trent did a really nice thing for Rachel, and you guys tried to let me in on it too. I appreciate it."

"We failed to protect you, though. But for your intervention, Al would have finished me in the conservatory yesterday. I am doubly shamed at the part I played in the deception. And now I am to be yours." Pierce took a moment to glare at Ash's turned back, whispering urgently, "Keep me nearby, Yvette. You needn't fear me. I can free you of the blackguard's hold over y—"

I pulled my hand free of his grip, scowling. I wanted to brood over my various interactions with Ash, not listen to Pierce's demon-hunter nonsense. "Pierce, I appreciate your offer, but if you kill Ash, you'll kill me, too. Literally. OK? Whether I like it or not, our fates are bound now. So consider Ash off your hitlist, or I'll have to add a compulsion into the mix of curses when I free you."

"Bound? How?"

"It's a long story. Suffice it to say that my head's a mess right now, and so's my magic, and apparently that's unlikely to change. So he's my familiar. Can we get off the subject?"

Pierce grimaced, not entirely satisfied, but he declined to press me any further. He regarded Ash speaking with Adrian, and frowned again. "And you have no issues with your demon enslaving another Coven witch?" he asked, contempt dripping from his voice.

"Adrian's here of his own free will, as he'd tell you if you bothered to ask him," I said, irritated afresh. "I'm not exactly thrilled about it either, but Adrian's happy as a clam because he's going to learn all the lovely black curses he watched _you_ slinging around last week when you battled Ku'Sox with Rachel. Or didn't you know you had a fan club?"

To his credit, Pierce looked a little chagrinned. "So he allied himself with your demon?" he asked, incredulous. "Willingly?"

"Apparently. He made a good deal. Go ask him. I'm sure he'll be eager to chat."

Adrian was, in fact, looking our way, an eager expression on his face. Pierce didn't look nearly as thrilled. I wondered if perhaps he'd enjoyed being the only Daring Rebel black-magic-slinging Coven member a little too much. "Are you certain this is a good plan, Mistress?"

I mentally counted to twenty before answering. Pierce was pushing every damned button I had today, but I was pretty sure he wasn't doing it intentionally. I was just in a really fucking BAD mood. I made an effort to lighten up a little. "Hell, no, but it's the only one I've got that doesn't involve torturing or killing someone. Adrian's a good guy, and his heart's in the right place. He didn't deserve the shunning. Neither did Viv. Or Rachel. You… I'm not so sure about," I said, forcing a grin. "According to Rachel, you're a _very_ naughty witch, Pierce."

Pierce took that as it was intended, and gave me a roguish grin and wink in return. I wondered if Rachel had been completely honest with him about what had happened between her and Al that night — given that grin, I wasn't entirely sure. But I wasn't going to be spilling any more of Rachel's secrets, and frankly, I didn't owe Pierce anything.

"So where is the Secret Rebel Base, anyway?" I asked, eager to get off a subject I didn't want to risk trying to lie badly about. Of course the reference was lost on Pierce, so I clarified, "The Coven. The HQ where all the shunnings are done?"

"Everywhere and nowhere," he said, losing his smile. "It's the nexus of the ley lines."

"It's the _what_? Aren't ley lines all haphazard and scattered all of over the world, no rhyme or reason?"

"They're connected in about a dozen places," he said, looking apologetic. "Your physics parlance may have the words to describe it, but I lack the terminology for your understanding. Each of the connections, it's the same place. The nexus. We built a physical structure to house it in Spain, but you can enter from any point and exit at any point."

I gaped. "They're all over the world, aren't they? That's how the Coven used to travel and keep up with witches."

Pierce nodded. "There's two points in North America, though the closest point to the old Colonies was in Ohio— near Cincinnati, actually. It was still a hell of a rough trip over the Appalachians in my time, but did beat spending two to three months at sea."

I grimaced at the thought. How any witch could stand a sea voyage was beyond me, but apparently they had, many times. I couldn't imagine the Coven giving out such a secret, even to their own people. "Do you still travel that way?"

"No… there's no need. It takes a fair amount of power, skill, and luck, and given that the natives built a monstrous great _snake _over it, the jig was up once settlements began pushing west."

"Wait, what?"

"I believe they call the site the Great Serpent Mound. Various tribes used it for their solstice gatherings, but the rest of the time it was sacred and uninhabited. The natives must have sensed the spiritual energy within the site, for all that the elves corrupted it. The sites are all gateways to the nexus, once direct connections to the Ever After for those who knew how to look."

I pondered that. It was common knowledge that the Ever After was thousands of years old, predating most of recorded history, but the elves had only left it about two thousand years back. "So the elves figured out how to use the sites to get out, and collapsed the escape tunnel behind them?"

"Much of the war was to keep them from accessing them, for fear they would do exactly what they did. They were under demon control prior; demons came and went without invitation. 'Twas only after the demons cursed their young that the elves finally pushed through, in a final act of desperation. They used their wild magic to seal the gateways with violent upheavals of earth and fire, closing them forever to all but demons specifically summoned to this realm."

"So why give over control of the sites to the Coven?" I asked.

"It's an old alliance," Pierce said. "One that we are breaking today. Yvette, if the elves discover us, it could mean war with witchkind."

I felt my stomach fall, because we were going to do a lot today that would be discovered by elves and everyone else. Was that Dali's true purpose? To blast open the gateways to reality once more? Probably blowing up a few dozen national monuments and holy sites in the process? _Peachy._ "Shit. We'll just have to be discrete? No, it's going to be a problem, isn't it?" But like so many other of the problems facing my life, to just settle for the options handed to me would result in short-term disaster. I was ready to take a risk. "But I still think that it's the right thing to do, all things considered. We'll just have to hope that Trent and Ceri really are on our side."

"Do you honestly believe that?" Pierce asked me, and I looked at him a little closer.

"Wasn't it you and Trent who come up with this whole 'hide Rachel from Al' plan?"

"Aye, but that doesn't mean I trust him entirely. Now she's under his power and protection, and I fear for her. Elves are liars."

I wasn't sure his concern was for her _safety_, not with that glint in his eye. Not after the blatant little-grade-school-kids-at-camp feel of the flirting between Rachel and Trent I'd witnessed earlier… but I let it go. Ash was walking over, Adrian behind. Adrian was looking a little anxious, and Ash just looked awkward. "Well, witch… you want to get to work?"

I suppressed a shudder as Adrian got too near and the curse on him started to trigger my anxieties again. Fucking _shunning._ Yeah, I guess we did have to get stirring. I did a calculation in my head… if it was about two hours or so after sunrise in California, we had about four or five hours until sunset in Spain, give or take. "Do you want to give us a hand with some of the curses we'll need?" I asked Pierce, who gave me an elegant bow.

"Evie, I need to speak with you," Ash said, giving Adrian and Pierce a measuring onceover. "Can I trust these two alone?"

"Adrian, did Ash tell you what we're up to?" Adrian nodded, looking like he'd swallowed hedgehogs. "And you're cool with it?"

He gave me an eloquent grimace. "I can hardly change my mind now," he said. "In for a penny and all that. I hate it, but frankly, I hate Oliver more at this point. And you say it'll get Brooke back? Not that I'm her biggest fan, but it would go a long way toward improving your image. Rachel's, too."

Rachel's reputation would hopefully be unconnected with the dynamite I was about to take to mine, but I appreciated the sentiment. "It should, though she won't be remembering a lot of her experiences here once it's done. I'm glad you're with us, Adrian." I gave Ash a grateful look, realizing he was offering me the chance not to know what, exactly, he'd told Adrian to convince him. Oddly, while I knew Ash had probably lied his head off, I trusted that he hadn't gone ahead and manipulated Adrian's mind. I paused to examine that thought, as Ash took my arm to jump us to another room. He'd asked me if I'd wanted that, and I'd asked him not to, and I was choosing to believe he hadn't just gone over my head and done it anyway.

I faced my demon in the library, as butterflies bred in my stomach again. I wanted to apologize for all the times I'd mistrusted his motives, whatever they were. I wanted to apologize for hurting him, though that would force him to admit that he had been hurt in the first place. But at least I was prepared for his question to me.

"Evie," he said, releasing my arm. "I know you've been waiting for me to say something, and I've been thinking about it since this morning, weighing my response. I need to know: Why?"

"Why?"

"Why would you say that? Not the words, not the timing… why do you believe that you…" He actually grimaced as he said it, "…_love_ me?"

"Fair enough," I replied, having expected something like this. "I thought a lot about it, when I thought you were dead. Why, after everything, was I so devastated by losing you? I mean, yeah, there's a lot of sexual attraction on my part, but it was more than that. I tried to blame it on the compulsion you said you put on me, but..." I tried to put into words the logic of my thoughts. "Look, I'm not happy about the compulsion, but I can't deny how it's shaped me. And I can't deny that perhaps it softened me for your influence later. But it also doesn't negate that of the demons I've met, you were the one that I could build a working relationship with. And I don't mean_ this_, what we have now, I mean back when I was just a witch. I know there were times that we just simply spent enjoying each others' company, even when one of us was circled. There were times you could have tried harder to catch me. There were times I should have banished you, and didn't. I don't feel anything like that connection with the others, Ash. I really felt… like you enjoyed it too. But of course I wasn't sure, was insecure as hell about it, couldn't trust myself or my judgment…"

Ash was silent, watching me with blank-faced intensity. He didn't look happy, but he didn't interrupt, either, not even to deny what I was saying. I half expected him to. That he didn't deny that perhaps he'd enjoyed my company, even when I was a witch, gave me heart for the rest. I took a moment to figure out how to say it in language that wouldn't sound like I was demanding anything in return, just understanding.

"I compared our situation to an arranged marriage, once. I'm not one hundred percent sanguine about it. I'm still not. I hate your job, for one thing. But… this is the important bit, Ash. I feel like I can live with you, and work with you. And if the lust and infatuation ever fades, as I'm sure it will, I believe I can be content with you. Because I trust you. I'm not here because of hormones, or how your venom and magic makes me feel. I'm here because… I like you. You make me laugh. And… you respect me. You showed me that, today. You didn't have to face down Newt for my sake, but you did. You don't have contempt in your eyes when you look at me, not like Al or Dali or Devi. You wanted me to stay here. Is that love? I don't know, but it could be. Love's a choice as much as it's a feeling, and I'm choosing to love you. I just… thought you should know. That I'm… _satisfied_ with all this."

Ash's face was still blank, but now there were muscles working in his jaw that even an unobservant person like me could recognize, and you could bounce an anvil off his tense shoulders. He just stared at me for a long, long minute.

"Well…?" I asked, giving him a half-smile. "Was that not what you wanted to hear?"

The blankness melted into blatant bewilderment. "It's not what I was expecting at all," he said.

"It sounds sort of calculating, and maybe it is. You know I don't have a romantic bone in my body."

That got the hint of a smile, anyway. "No, you're… surprisingly reasonable. Not that I expected any different, not from my practical Evie." My face warmed, despite my foreboding that I wasn't going to like anything else he was going to say tonight. He was looking entirely too agitated and unhappy as he shifted his weight, making as if to draw nearer, then stopping himself. "Though I almost wish you'd said—this would be easier if…fuck. You made this conversation about ten times more difficult."

I just waited, tingling with anticipation and dread. _Now what?! _ I wanted to wail. _God damnit all, can't I at least have a single fucking DAY of happiness before fate hands me another lemon?_

"Self-denial does not come easily to me," he growled. "Privation has made us too greedy for every drop of pleasure we can squeeze out of our wretched existence. To deny myself the sun when it's within my grasp takes a fortitude that I am not sure I possess."

For a heart-stopping moment I thought he was being literal, referring to Zee's plan of possessing demon bodies to escape the Ever After, but then I saw the fangs and claws. _ Oh. _"The venom thing," I said. "Ash, we can live without it."

He approached and reached, threading fingers into my hair in a familiar, possessive gesture, and I leaned into his touch. "If only it were that simple, _Saenat_. For us, infatuation and instinct have aligned nicely with expediency. Until today."

"Is that an admission that the infatuation, at least, is mutual…?" I asked playfully.

He pulled me to him, grip tight and expression suddenly harsh. "Of course it's mutual!" he growled. "Surely you've seen that! Everyone's seen the fools we've made of ourselves. You have no idea what a joke we are, _Saenat_," he added, before my warm fuzzies had a chance to get more than fluffy.

"Thanks for that," I grumbled, even as I had to admit to myself that he was right. And that sexual infatuation was hardly the same thing as love. It was difficult to get too angry with him when his roaming hand was caressing me with firm, possessive pressure and his red eyes were so nakedly hungry as they fixed on my face. I was tingling again, my body craving his touch, his magic, his bite, his sweet, sweet poison, and it was all I could do to remember that there was an important conversation we were supposed to be having here. "So what's changed? Was it Newt?"

He groaned, clearly just as distracted as I was. "Isn't it always Newt?" he said, voice harsh. "You have no idea how much I despise that woman right now, for all she's merely a messenger for an unwelcome truth." His eyes roved over my face, lighting on the scar briefly before returning to mine. "Evie, I honestly don't know what to do. No, that's not right. I know what I have to do; I'm just not strong enough to do it. Not without you."

That squashed the fuzzies flat. In fact, they froze solid and stuck in my throat. I tried to pull back a suspicious step, but Ash held me tight. "Do _what_, Ash?"

"I… it would be so easy to just say what you want to hear, Evie. It'd be so easy to slip into your mind, and…" He shook his head, breath hissing harshly. "It _should _be easy. I've had no conscience to tell me otherwise for millennia. I am a liar among liars." His lips brushed mine as if he couldn't stop himself, his breath harsh. "A monster. Battle not with monsters, Evie," he whispered, voice pained. "Gaze not into the abyss. But what of the abyss itself? What, when it gazes back? I have gazed too long upon your love, _Saenat_. I cannot _unsee_ it."

Yeah, my mouth fell open, and I felt my eyes sparkling with tears when he kissed my forehead. I couldn't speak, elation and dread in equal measure making my own heartbeat painful.

"Newt ordered me to bind you, Evie," he said, and cold icewater dashed down my spine. Once again, my poor warm fuzzies were thoroughly drowned before they could get properly fuzzy.

"Ordered you…?"

"You know our situation. If the Ever After should perish, so would you. Newt knows better than anyone how slim our chances are of averting the disaster, even should we convince our prodigal son to lend us a hand." His lips twisted in distaste as he spoke of Ku'Sox, and I felt my expression mirror his. "But without him, with only the power of four women, three untrained…" He shook his head. "There's really not much hope. One of you must open the power of your mind to bind with Newt's, to guide the repair of the rifts. She doesn't care if it's you or Rachel. Rachel's beyond her reach, and has no ties here. You… she knows how to manipulate you, Evie. She'll force the issue if she has to."

I felt my face warming with anger. I'd liked Newt. I'd honestly thought she was sort of fond of me, too, in her way. "What do you mean, _force_ it?"

Ash's grip in my hair grew a little painful. "I made a deal with her, to spare your life. I swore to her I'd do whatever it took to protect your mind. _Whatever_ it took, Evie." He took a breath, holding me tighter to his body. "Even it if means… even if it means allowing another..."

I tore free of his grasp, leaving several strands of dark hair dangling from his fingers. "_What?!"_

"I didn't realize… I thought I could do it. Be sufficient buffer. And when I doubted my ability, I took steps to prevent the bond that could destroy you." His cheeks were red. "She believes the bond is necessary. If I won't do it, she'll incapacitate you long enough for Dali to take over."

"Like hell she will!" I glared at him furiously. "And you'd _let_ her…?"

Ash swallowed. "Fighting her would make me an oath-breaker. _If_ I survived, I'd be exiled to the surface."

I blinked, seeing the trap he was in. "Oh. Then… then you have to do it, Ash. Because fuck if I'm going to let anyone force me into mating with _Dali_! Why _him_?"

"Because he, of all of us, has the experience to protect your mind. You… you have a good chance of coming out of it with your sanity intact, with him. I wish… I wish I could say the same of me, _Saenat_." His fingers were clenched. "You have no idea how humiliating it is to admit that I am insufficient to this task."

"Wait." I wanted to throw up. "_You_ think I should do it?"

"I am laying this decision before us, Evie," he said, and now there was a note I'd never heard in his voice. Desperation, perhaps? "I need you to put aside your anger and hear me. Should we mate, and I fail in my duty, I've not only destroyed you, I've destroyed all of us. Do you understand me? We would _all _perish for my arrogance. But if you willingly stand by Dali… we may all survive."

I put my hand to my mouth, horror crawling through me. "No. No, Ash, I refuse to consider this."

"_Saenat_—" He caught me again, and held me though I struggled against the bitter words he was speaking.

"What if you _can_ do it? I know you can keep my head safe, Ash. Who knows me better than you?"

"Who indeed?" he said. "Who damaged your mind so exquisitely in the first place? I am_ untried_, Evie. Should I fail you—"

"You _won't."_

"And how do you _know_? Do you honestly think that my _desire_ is sufficient? That somehow, _love _will see us through when my ability is lacking?" He gave me a harsh bark of a laugh. "_Love_ didn't save the hundreds of our wives and sisters who perished all those millennia ago. _Hope_ and _faith_ didn't stay Newt's hand when the madness Ku'Sox thrust on her drove her to destroy her kin. Do you honestly want to gamble your future on blind trust that everything will work out for the best?" Ash gave me a little shake. "I don't. I can't! You say you trust me, Evie. Trust me that I_ cannot promise you that I can do this_!"

I stared at him, heart pounding in my aching throat. _What if he was right?_ "Ash…" God, this was all too much to take.

"There's time," Ash said, voice rough. "Please, _Saenat_, I'm just asking you to think about your options. Newt gave you the rest of the week. She didn't expect me to tell you all this. She didn't want me to, actually — she likes you. That's why she picked Dali for you. He's a cold bastard, but he's the most talented demon we have when it comes to the mind." His face twisted. "She _expected _me to betray you, and simply twist your mind, to save my own skin."

And he _hadn't._

I stared at him unblinkingly, because if I blinked the tears would start flowing and they'd never stop. Here was his confession to me — that I mattered enough to him that he would defy Newt, that he would consider giving me up to save my life, even if it destroyed him.

And he'd given enough of a damn about me to lay the decision before me, so we could make it together.

_I know what I have to do; I'm just not strong enough to do it. Not without you._

I drew a shuddering breath, determined to honor his honesty with equal fortitude, even if Therese wanted to blow up another chunk of real estate in her heartbroken rage. "What do you think I should do, Ash?"

"I don't know."

"I don't want Dali."

"Of course you don't."

I tried to control my rapid breaths, because panic was stealing my ability to think straight. "I'll take the chance, Ash!"

"Evie, please… we'll take the week. We decide this together."

"No! I don't need the week, Ash, I am not giving myself over to that coldhearted—"

Ash's grip turned fierce enough that I whimpered a little. "_Don't ask me to be the instrument of your destruction, Evie!" _he growled._ "Please."_

Therese nearly burst free then, but I managed to rein her in. It wasn't a rejection, and that was the only reason I could stop her from lashing out in pain. I wanted to lash out. I wanted something, anything, to hurt as much as I was hurting right now, wanted to hear the screaming that I couldn't seem to voice. "Ash… if I give myself over to that man… you know he'll destroy my mind anyway. I might live, but it won't be me."

"But you'll _live_," he replied, voice hoarse.

I struggled again, and this time he let me tear free once more. I couldn't look at him, because I'd see again what I'd just seen — the pain, the anger, and the blatant acknowledgement that Ash returned my feelings, more confirmation than I'd ever dreamed I'd get. Ash turned away, wiping away the evidence with a brusque gesture.

_Emotionally compromised_. Dali's words echoed in my mind. He knew, and Newt knew, and both were in apparent agreement. Ash cared. And that made him dangerous to me.

"Of course, you're right," he said, and I sensed him in my mind, listening to my thoughts. I flinched, frightened, at how easily Ash could have manipulated me all this time. It would have been so easy for him to give me exactly what I'd needed all along, to fake an emotion he didn't feel, to make me love him falsely instead of allowing room for it to grow despite the lack of warmth and sunlight.

"So I'm expected to give you up and bind myself to a man I don't love, who terrifies me, for my own damned good and to save the world…?"

"That… about sums it up," he replied. "And I'm to allow it, for the sake of your mind and our survival."

Now tears spilled over even through the numbness. "Will you?" _You said you'd never let me go. You said I'd never escape you. You said you'd never do it again, never give me the choice—_

_You wanted the choice,_ he reminded me silently. _Free of influence. Painful as it is, even if it might break you. And you're right. I can't do it alone. The only way this will happen is if we mutually agree._

Somehow those words tamed Therese, and she sank back down into my psyche to lick her wounds.

"Would… would it be forever? Could I …could I do it until the Ever After's saved? Then have him release me?" But Dali would never relinquish his hold on me, I knew it. Dali's other option floated across my mind, and I looked at it clearly… but one glance at Ash's fangs reminded me of the problem. "He lied, didn't he…? He said I could keep you as a lover, but… if I were bound to him, we couldn't share blood. I'd… I'd repulse you."

He was a long time in answering. "I wish I could say it didn't matter, _Saenat."_ He bent his head, the admission paining him as much as it did me.

"So it's Dali or nothing? Dali or death? You leave my life entirely?"

"I'll remain your anchor. If that's what you want. We may decide…"

"Ash." Another little piece of my heart shriveled. "You said _that _was forever, too…?"

"I _wished_ it were so," he replied, voice quiet. "Evie, even for us, nothing is forever. But a clean break might be easier, on us both. If you were willing, and Newt helped facilitate—"

"No."

"Evie, be reasonable—"

"NO! I'm tired of being reasonable. I'm tired of being strong! I'm tired of being the rational, dependable woman who always gets fucking screwed over by everyone else!" Even knowing I sounded like a goddamn teenager, I couldn't stop the words. "I've lived on the sidelines all my life, safe, rational, and cold! I want to_ live_, Ash!" I couldn't put it into words, the total frustration that had come over me. Other people led uncomplicated lives, other people got to make idiotic mistakes — why not me? Because I'd always been above it, arrogantly assuming I was above that sort of foolishness.

Ash picked up on this immediately, though he let me finish my rant. "Three words for you, _Saenat. Romeo and Juliet_."

I stared at him, disgusted with everything. "Fuck you," I growled. "I fucking_ hate_ that play."

"But now you understand it," he said quietly.

How could he? How could he reduce my emotion to some shallow, teenage infatuation? But was he right? Was I ready to throw away everything—my life, my sanity, my potential…not to mention his life and the lives of all of the other demons here, for the sake of my precious little feelings? Was it really so juvenile and simple a choice as that? The worst part was, there was a part of me sitting in a little vantage point three steps behind my own head, looking down upon my tantruming self in judgment. That bit was already seeing exactly how cold, practical Evie would react, what cold, practical Evie would end up choosing. I hated myself in that moment, and I hated Ash for being the messenger, and I hated my demon heritage and the entire goddamned Ever After. "What I if I don't give a damn about saving the Ever After?" I asked angrily, wiping away my renewed tears with an impatient swipe.

"But you do."

"I'm not giving myself to Dali, Ash. You're my demon, and I'm not giving you up. Worst thing that happens, I die. Or you die. But you'll come back."

"No," he said, barely audible. "No, that's not the worst thing."

"Ash…"

He ran a hand through his hair, but it got stuck, and for a moment I thought he'd scalp himself, given how hard he was pulling to get it unstuck. "It's not the worst thing," he repeated, breath still ragged.

Another chill speared me as I contemplated that of all the beings I'd met, Ash was one to know what was worse than death. Perhaps he was right. Witnessing a loved one's slow slip into madness would be horrifying, but how much damage could I end up doing to him and anyone else in the process? Was I selfish for wishing to subject him to that? Hadn't I just declared for the world that I loved this man? As if the winds of my passion suddenly changed direction, I felt my sails fall limp, suddenly overcome with confusion and doubt. Tears threatened once more, but I cast my old, reliable calming charm over myself half a dozen times over, until I felt as far removed from myself as Ash, now across the room leaning over a table, eyes distant.

However this worked out, he was already distancing himself. I wanted to reach across that divide, then I wondered whether the rift between us since his death had ever really been mended at all.

"I'll… consider it," I said, feeling like my voice came from miles away, from someone else. "I'm not happy about this," I added, just to make it clear.

"As you can see, I'm all seriously fucking _thrilled_ about it myself, over here," Ash replied, glancing at me with a face that hadn't quite managed his blank façade, but was valiantly trying.

He just had to keep poking that soft spot in my armor. I still wanted to slap him, but now I also wanted to kiss him, and part of me even wanted a cuddle, which was an alien impulse for me. "Ass." Neither of us spoke for a few minutes. "I can't believe you compared me to_ Juliet_," I complained.

"Drastic times and all that," he said, looking up at me from under a mop of disheveled hair, with that boyish chagrinned expression that never failed to tweak a heartstring. Damn it. "But it's an apt comparison."

There was a long silence. "Tristan and Yseut," I said, finding a literary couple I liked a little better. "You make me marry King Mark and it'll turn out just as well."

He huffed. "We have our own version of that one. It ends with the creation of the Tsangpo Canyon."

I blinked — Tsangpo was even bigger than the Grand Canyon. Demons had made it? Or rather, an angry love-struck demon pair perishing together for some idiot reason or other had made it? "All right," I said, finally capitulating. "I'll… I'll think it over. If you will."

"I don't need to—"

"Yes, you do," I growled. "Because if I have to go to Dali, you're going to have to fucking deal with it. You're going to have to watch everything he does to me, and you're going to have to keep me sane anyway. You're still going to be my anchor. And I'm going to broadcast every last scratch and bite and exactly how I feel about each one."

Oh yeah, he winced in heartfelt disgust at that thought. "As you wish." He sighed, straightening up. "Fucking hell. Can we end this conversation now?"

"Not without…" But how could I say it now? My voice cut off in a choke. "Shit."

"Yeah." Ash took another ragged breath. "Look, Evie… I never intended any of this to… to be so…"

I sensed there was an apology coming, and suddenly I couldn't bear to hear it. "Shut up, Ash," I said. "Teach me something useful, will you? How to block all this emotional shit? So I can deal with the whole Coven idiocy we're about to do?"

"Sure, Evie," he said, voice tired. Sure enough, the knowledge of at least a dozen different curses entered my mind, a veritable banquet of emotional numbness at my fingertips. I chose one and invoked it, feeling the dissociated feeling grow. I could almost pretend I didn't have a soggy, aching, pummeled little wounded thing beating in my chest anymore. When I looked at Ash again, it was like looking at a stranger. I remembered my weird little passive-aggressive chat with him, back in the woods of Colorado after Al had murdered Derek's grandparents, when I'd as good as told Ash that he was the center of my little distorted universe. I vaguely wondered whether all of this could've been avoided if I'd just followed my instincts the first time and kicked the kid out of my office.

Hindsight, and all. I hadn't, and now I was stuck dealing with a reality to shore up, a Coven to bring down, and a girl to save. God, poor Hope. I could imagine exactly how she'd felt upon learning the truth of her birth from Delores. After the last ten minutes, I would have given just about _anything_ for the world to be different than it was. At least with the curses, I could pretend everything was normal enough to get through the next twenty-four hours. Yay, denial…

_Denial._

Hope wouldn't have been _vengeful._ Hope had just learned a terrible, terrible secret, been forced to confront a reality that was utterly alien. Hope would be wishing to go back in time, to forget what she'd learned. Lord knew I certainly wanted to, right now.

But _vengeful_ came later in the demon grief response. Hope would be in _denial_.

Whatever magic she'd done, it would have been related to denial… somehow. I was absolutely certain of it. And then she'd have been hit by a wave of nostalgia from Rachel, reinforcing …what, exactly? Hope would've tapped a line, perhaps several…

"Shall we return?" Ash asked, taking my arm.

"Sure," I said, letting the thought drift away. I'd have to examine it later. Right now, there were curses to stir, and a Coven to destroy. Vengeance should hopefully be a fine distraction for a demon with a broken heart.

* * *

><p>William Blake's <em>The Clod and the Pebble:<em>

"Love seeketh not itself to please,  
>"Nor for itself hath any care,<br>"But for another gives its ease,  
>"And builds a heaven in hell's despair.<br>So sung a little Clod of Clay,  
>Trodden with the cattle's feet,<br>But a Pebble of the brook  
>Warbled out these metres meet:<br>"Love seeketh only Self to please,  
>"To bind another to its delight,<br>"Joys in another's loss of ease,  
>"And builds a hell in heaven's despite."<p> 


	35. Naked Singularity

**In Which Evie Checks Out **

The next two hours passed in something of a blur. I wasn't interested in conversation, preferring to brood in silence as I hashed the conversation over and over in my mind until both it and my ego resembled mashed potatoes. I was fucked up beyond repair and it looked like I'd have to trust that a scheming businessman like Dali could save me. _Shit._ At this point, did I even want to bother?

Whenever Adrian's presence became too much to bear, I popped another charm on myself, layering the curses until they resembled a second aura, blanketing my mind and body in a nice, numb, mostly transparent fog. It was far easier to focus on potions this way, though I had so little interest in following the any conversation that eventually Adrian and Pierce ceased to ask me what was wrong. I barely heard them anyway. I brewed us all line-jumping curses, I brewed us damage-resistance and body-fixing curses, I brewed up doppelganger curses, and I brewed up things Ash didn't bother explaining and about which I couldn't dredge enough care from Give-a-fuck Bay to ask.

Al arrived at some point, nancing around like a big peacock, insulting me and smacking Pierce. I didn't care, apart from reminding him that I needed Pierce at full capacity. Al said something about Pierce not being mine yet, and Pierce protested that he could take care of himself, but at that point I'd already lost interest. I could feel Al's eyes on me, but it didn't matter. The eyes of the entire Ever After were probably on our little dysfunctional kitchen right now, but it wouldn't make a difference to my stirring, and that was all that required my attention at the moment.

I felt like everything was out of my hands now. I knew nothing about how the Coven was set up, or how the headquarters were laid out, or what the demons would have to do to destroy it. I was just along for the ride, trapped on this freight train headed for the busted bridge, and there was nothing I could do except bail out or hold on. But bailing out wasn't an option, either. So here I was, stirring curses and trying not to fall apart like the rest of my life, waiting for the inevitable fiery doom just down the line.

Ash tried to reach me at some point, and I answered his questions about whatever it was as best I could. I fought him when he tried to strip all the curses off me, though, which proved I did have some spark left. He was still annoyed, which finally penetrated my fog of numbness, and when he pushed again I snapped at him, "Look. You want me to consider your brilliant idea. I'm considering it. I'm not going to fall apart now. Just leave me the hell alone."

A fit of sneezing, however, was harder to ignore. I finally realized it was someone calling me. I couldn't imagine who it might be, but on the off chance that it might be Newt or Rachel, I ambled over to Ash's mirror. I had words for Newt… somewhere in there, anyway. Right nowt I wasn't certain I gave enough of a damn to even be impolite to her. I also had words for Rachel, but they were mostly along the lines of how breaking and entering into the Coven was her kind of gig, not mine, and would she mind taking over so I could go sulk for a few years?

As it turned out, it was neither. The cold, blue steel pillar of Dali's mind met mine on the other end with a dash of cold, logical clarity, emphasizing just how vastly discombobulated and scattered my thoughts were, and I winced. I honestly couldn't imagine anyone else I wanted to speak to less right now. _Yvette Sinclaire. I will bring Brooke over so that we may discuss our preparations in approximately twenty minutes._

"Sure," I replied, unenthusiastically. "Let's all hang out. Should be fun. Gang's all here."

_Yvette, what is the matter with your mind?_

I tried, but I couldn't pull it together even to lie to him. "I'm reconsidering your proposal," I said. "I'm just a little depressed about the state of my life at the moment. Sure it'll pass soon and then I'll be my normal belligerent self."

Now I could feel the eyes of just about everyone in the room burning into my back, and realized that I'd been speaking aloud. Oh, just peachy. Even worse, I could sense Dali's total lack of surprise and caught a hint of his anticipation. So he'd known all along that Newt was leaning on Ash over this. _Brilliant. Ugh._ I'm sure he got a good whiff of my distaste before I took my hand off the mirror. It probably didn't matter to him that much in the long run, that I was unhappy about the prospect of him as a mate. I'd been clear as crystal in his office about my reluctance, after all. Perhaps my disgust _was_ the source of his anticipation. I tried not to think along those lines any further as I returned to stirring.

Some time later, I realized that it was Al standing by my hip, and that he'd probably been looming for a few minutes waiting to catch my attention. "Proposal…?" Al asked, and I shrugged.

"None of your business." _Nosy son of a bitch. Well, you're not getting any more entertainment from my predicament if I can help it._ "Go away," I added, settling back into my funk. "This part's tricky." And it was — the next sequence would require all the attention I had to spare. I saw Al linger a moment more before walking away, then banished him from my mind as I performed the ritual of adding pinches of powder between precise stirs, controlled breaths, and whispered words. When the concoction finally turned a milky green, I sat back and wiped my brow, removing it from the heat. I barely felt the sting of the knife as I invoked the curse, but I was startled when I saw water spattering my fingers. I sniffed and realized that tears were running down my face again, unnoticed until now. Sighing with annoyance, I dashed them from my cheeks, casting another calmness charm over the slew of curses. It had pretty much no effect on my mood, at this point, but at least the flow of tears ceased. I spent a moment listening to the indistinguishable, subdued murmuring of the men around me, finding my center once more.

_Endure, Evie. You've survived so much; you will survive this._

At what cost, though? At what point should I throw up my hands and decide the price was too high? Would I really turn my mind over to Dali to survive? It would be giving him my soul, and whereas I'd done so with Ash, before, I knew that Dali wouldn't give it back. Not without some sort of leverage.

_Leverage. _ Perhaps that's what I should be looking for, now. Some kind of leverage, guarantee that he'd let me go after an appointed time. Some kind of protection against his access to areas of my mind where he could manipulate me. Blackmail, maybe. Perhaps I should speak to Newt about it — she'd apparently appointed herself guardian of my fucked-up head. Ash claimed she liked me. Maybe she could help. Maybe she'd help me if I saved Hope for her.

I just had to figure out _how_.

I'd been close to some kind of insight a few hours ago, before Ash had interrupted. Something about Hope operating from a place of pain and confusion, rather like the one I was in right now. Except Hope wasn't wearing the bracelets to keep herself from accessing the lines directly, and Hope hadn't had an anchor keeping her soul bound to her earthly flesh. She'd been making some powerful magic, that much was certain. In the end, she'd self-destructed like I'd nearly done, when Ash had dived into the lines and pulled me back to myself.

I shivered, recalling the sensation of my mind reaching out over the lines, feeling myself dissolving and dissipating and unable to stop it. Ash had gathered all the pieces of my soul and stitched them back together. Why hadn't Newt been able to do the same for Hope? She'd tried, but she'd missed something, spent hours searching. Why hadn't she found it?

What had I been trying to do? I'd been directionless, wanting only to gather as much power as I could. I hadn't even been sure why — some vague notion of ending Ash by drawing the lines through him, maybe? But Hope wouldn't have wanted vengeance. Not yet. Hope would have been wanting to hide from the pain, wanting to push it all away. She wouldn't have been gathering the power for destruction, herself or others'. But what _had_ she been casting?

Perhaps her ley line might hold a clue. Not that I was any expert in ley lines, but—

The sound of flesh meeting flesh broke my chain of thoughts, and I looked up, startled. Al had just given Ash a good smack upside the head.

"Do I need to separate you two?" I asked, and Adrian snickered behind me. Ash gave me a surly look, and Al favored me with a condescending sneer. At least, that's what it looked like — the glasses made it difficult to gauge his expression. "You got it out of your system? Dali'll be here shortly." I stood up as my stomach clenched at the thought of seeing that sneer on Dali's mug. _Ugh._ I didn't think I could handle it, and anyway, that last thought train had given me a great excuse to get out of this stifling atmosphere for ten minutes. They wouldn't need me for planning, anyway. "Either of you boys want to take a short trip with me? I want to take a look at Hope's line before we leave to do this Coven thing."

Ash opened his mouth, but Al was at my side in a moment, gallantly taking my arm. "Why, I would _love_ to, Yvette," he said smoothly, giving Ash a glare that clearly indicated that he was not coming along. "We have _so_ much to discuss, you and I."

"No, we don't," I replied. "I just want to look at the damned line."

"As you like," Al replied, giving Ash another _stay put!_ glare when the other demon moved to follow. "Don't trouble yourself, Kavi. I'll have her back here in a jiffy."

_Kavi?_

We dissolved into the iciness of a line, Al's mind encircling mine before I could throw up a shield myself. Before I could stop him, he'd stripped away the curses that hid my battered psyche, tossing them aside like leaves.

_Hey!_

_Unconscionable,_ he replied, and I felt his irritation. _ Making yourself so slow and vulnerable. All while expecting a visit from Dali, no less! He'd have you under his heel in thirty seconds, and then where would you be? How you survived this long is beyond me, Yvette._

_Sheer force of will,_ I replied. Without my curses the anger, disappointment, and heartache had returned with a vengeance. All laid out for Al to see, how nice. _You're such a bastard, Al. Are we fucking there yet?_

I heard him chuckle as we reformed on the barren surface of the Ever After, in the ruins of UCLA. The university buildings were mostly rubble around us, the palm trees aflame without being consumed. Above us, the sky was iron-grey with thick, evil-looking clouds that hung so low I felt like they might fall on us and drown us in a literal shitstorm. I opened my mouth to ask why the hell we weren't on the reality side of things, then remembered that of course it was the middle of the day. I could cross, but Al couldn't.

"My mother's ashes," Al said, sounding shocked.

I followed his gaze to the wreckage of the science building, and the ley line that lay within, pulsing and shimmering like some kind of sci-fi event horizon. I hadn't gotten a good look at the thing when I'd been here with Adrian, but now it had my full attention. It wasn't a ley line at all, at least, not as I thought of them. Ley lines went from somewhere to somewhere. This was… my mind shied away from it, because it hurt, somehow, to look at it. Worse, it was pulling at us. It was a faint sensation, but I felt the gentle tug on my soul and dreaded the thought of approaching any closer for fear it might suck my aura right off of me. It lurked there, beckoning. The… resonance?… pitch…? Everything about it was distorted and very, very wrong.

"Yeah," I agreed. "What the hell…? Is this the first time you've seen it?"

He nodded, tilting his head curiously. "Treble!" he shouted, and I jumped two feet back when a pony-sized grey gargoyle appeared beside him without warning. I gaped, because while I'd seen pictures, I'd never seen an actual, living gargoyle up close like this. Her skin was grey, her tail had a tuft, and her ears were flat to her head as she drew up her lips to reveal fangs at least six inches long. Her grimace wasn't directed at me, though, but at the rift in the building before us.

"Discord and cacophony, what do you want of me here?" she rasped, flinching as if in pain.

"Opinion," Al replied shortly, pointing to the line.

"Fucked up," she replied. "None of us can stand it. The screeching harmonics, the — please. It's too loud. Let me leave."

Al reached out to touch her, red eyes widening as he did so. Even as she seemed to relax a fraction, he hunched up in pain. He held the pose for a moment, then released her. "Go," he said, voice a harsh whisper, then held up a hand. "No, wait. Yvette. Have you brushed with a gargoyle before?"

"Have I what?"

"Treble," he said, and Treble, still trembling visibly, reached out a clawed hand and grasped my arm.

My world went white, then exploded. All I could hear was screeching, keening discord, and distant screaming. A kaleidoscope of shifting, unstable colors and chaotic patterns, frequencies beyond my hearing combining with resonances that grated on my raw nerves filling and overwhelming my senses.

When I could see again, I found myself lying in the red dust, holding my head and whimpering. Treble was gone, and Al was looking at me with confusion writ clear on his features. "Hmm," he said.

I wanted to throw up, but settled for throwing a rock at him. "That's all you have to say? _Hmm?_"

Al was still eying me in a faintly clinical fashion. "You've never touched a gargoyle before, have you? Interesting."

My head was starting to pound, and all my senses were still tingling painfully, like I'd just been jolted with a live wire and little sparks were crackling about here and there between my neurons. "Al…" I growled, furious at him. "Pretend for a minute that I'm an ignorant doofus who wasn't raised properly and explain what the hell just happened?"

Al smirked. "We designed our gargoyles to live and breathe the lines for us, so we could hear their songs. To touch one is to experience all of the local lines and their unique resonance — which is why it takes a gargoyle to travel them. You're apparently quite sensitive to ley lines already. Fascinating."

_Fascinating, my ass._ My mind was starting to make sense of the sensations, now, as I realized there was a three-dimensional network-like afterimage burned into my thoughts. All the lines. Not just the local lines, ALL of them, everywhere, all burnt through reality, winding through the Ever After, some tied to demons and sharing their auras, many older than the Ice Age humming with the colors of the universe, a huge, incomprehensibly complicated knotwork of energy. Now I was certain I was going to throw up, and I tried to banish the sensations from my brain. "Oh, god," I moaned. "It's too much."

Al gave me time to recover, and I focused on simply breathing, letting the afterimage fade from my psyche. "We'll have to find you a gargoyle," he said, though he sounded far from certain that this was a good idea. "You'll need one, eventually."

_We…?_ Did Al still have some crazy-ass illusion that he'd be teaching me a damned thing?_ Yeah, right. Not in this lifetime._ "You're kidding, right? If I ever touch one again, I'll explode. That was horrible!"

"It's unnerving, but once you're bound, there's no need for touch. In your case, however, I would suggest you have your anchor present prior to the binding."

"Bound?" _You've got to be kidding me._ "This is another one of these fucking demon binding-for-life things? Forget it! I've had more than enough of magical demon binding-for-life shit. And the last thing some poor gargoyle needs is to be magically bound to _me_." I sat up, brushing clingy, malodorous dust from my hair and clothing.

Al didn't reply, gaze once more fixed upon the rift before us for a long moment. "What else do you notice about it, Yvette?" he asked, in a voice that indicated he had thoughts but didn't want to bias me. The professorial tone of the question irked me, but I gamely looked again anyway. I managed three whole seconds of observation before I had to turn off my second sight once more, wincing.

"It's…" I tried to describe it, which was difficult since I had such a difficult time even looking at it. "It doesn't go anywhere. No, that's not right. It… goes nowhere?" I shook my head, looking for an analogy for what I'd seen. "It's a…loop. A Möbius strip," ?" I said, reaching back into my disused physics background. "Or a Klein bottle. Something… twisted and turned back on itself?"

Al nodded. "It's not a ley line from reality to reality, or even reality to Ever After. It's a rift that contains itself."

"Like a black hole or something?" No, that wasn't right. I just didn't have words for what my mind was seeing, beyond what my eyes could stand to witness.

"Yes, event horizon and all." Al's smile turned wicked. "Care to take a look peek inside, love?"

"Not in _this_ lifetime," I replied, finding a mote of pleasure in the thought that oblivion called, just over there, but I was still fighting it. Good. I wasn't done _yet._

"What else? Look to reality this time, Evie. What do you see?"

I swallowed back rising bile, turning my attention to the surroundings, and reluctantly raised my second sight again, trying not to see the singularity crouching within the rubble. UCLA in Hell was not a pretty sight, either. I looked into reality, finding the ruined, collapsed lab building, then compared it to what I saw in the Ever After. I had to go back and forth a few times before I could explain it. "The buildings… the damage doesn't match. It's not right, somehow. I can't explain how."

Al pursed his lips, lifting his head as if catching a scent in the air. "The Ever After is a damaged reflection of reality," he said, again with that professorial tone that was both familiar and totally irritating. "But the damage is quite specific in its patterns." He pointed to the building, specifically at the middle portion where, in reality, the building had caved in around a missing sphere. "What you see here is the damage that would occur to this building, were it, in fact,_ intact_ in reality."

And that was exactly it. I could totally see it now. In the Ever After, the rubble was equally distributed, as if the internal structure all throughout had become riddled with age or disease. There was no material missing, for lack of a better description. "So Hope made a ley line that goes nowhere, and only damaged the building in reality? What does it mean?"

Al shrugged. "I've no idea. I've never seen anything like it before." His goat-slitted eyes traveled over the desolate landscape dispassionately, as if losing interest. "And we have little chance of healing the breach before it kills us, most likely— not unless we kill the little bitch first. But that solution only rarely works even with regular ley lines— and this monster may only grow hungrier if we try that solution." He looked up at the heavy, ominous clouds and grimaced. "So, Yvette? What were _you _hoping to learn from this little jaunt, love?"

"Something about why Hope's still dying," I said. "If I can save her…" " I let the rest of the thought go unsaid. Who was I to think I'd come up with the answer, if Dali and Newt and everyone else here, who knew so much more about lines and demon magic, didn't have a clue?

Al gave it a moment's thought. "Deduce what curse she was casting," Al he finally suggested. "Working backwards from the available evidence has led our best minds to a dead end. And there are no precedents for damage such as this."

"Yeah." I felt my slim hope fading back into numbness once more. My chances of discovering it within my designated week were pretty slim. After that…? Well, it probably wouldn't matter. Dali would have me. Or Hope might be dead, in which case Newt would let us all perish. "Anything else you can tell me?"

"Why, Yvette. How _pleased_ I am that you asked." And with a smirk, Al took my arm and hurled us into the lines once more.


	36. The Price of Immortality

_I just adore Algaliarept. He's so bad when he's good, and so good when he's bad, and he does it all with such panache. If Rachel doesn't want him I'm totally stealing him for myself._

**In Which Evie Meets the Ex**

Unexpectedly, we appeared on the surface again, in a completely different part of the Ever After. I felt the slithering of smut over my soul, realizing that Al was making me pay for these trips. _Jerk._ I didn't fight it. Ash's prediction, weeks ago, that the filthy, creeping sensation would become second nature all too quickly had turned out to be right.

"Why are we still out here?" I asked, shivering in the thin wind. Without the protection of the clouds hanging over UCLA, the sun bore down on us, lending no warmth whatsoever as it tore at my aura, rasping and grating at it mercilessly. It was an awful sensation. "What's the matter with the sun?" I couldn't help asking, appalled.

"It's all getting worse," Al said. "Three new demon women and everything goes to hell in a handbasket."

"Newt thinks we can fix it," I said, and the thought was salt on the recent wound in my soul, at what Newt expected me to do to accomplish this. Maybe Al heard the pain in my voice, or maybe not, but he was silent, giving me time to pull myself back together. I scrubbed at my eyes furiously, glad that the fine grit in the wind was there to give me the excuse.

"So I've gathered," he said, not looking at me. His tone was totally nonchalant as he asked, "You're considering mating with Dali, are you?"

I shivered again, forcing myself to speak past the lump in my throat. "Why do you care?" Great. This was NOT what I wanted to talk about, not out here, not now, and certainly not with_ AL_ of all people. "And I thought I made you promise not to interfere in my love life, Al!"

"I'm not interfering in yours, I'm interfering in _Ash's_," he said, smirking at me. I rolled my eyes, inwardly shaking my head at my own gullibility. His red-eyed gaze traveled over the desolate landscape, the dead, sandy, scorched earth and the empty riverbed we stood beside. He conjured a parasol and handed it to me, doing the same for himself. "It's worse today," he said, squinting at something, and I realized he was looking at another ley line with his second sight. I did the same. This one was lovely, glowing beautiful and proud as it snaked along for a good forty feet. "Rachel's line," he said, nodding at it.

Rachel had made that? _Wow._ It fairly pulsed with newness and life, glowing brightly in the blasted emptiness. It was nothing like Hope's malformed monstrosity of a line, squatting in the ruins and sucking the Ever After into it one particle at a time.

"It was merely killing us slowly," he said. I wondered if he was referring to the line, or Rachel herself. "Hope's breach has made it all worse. _You_ have no plans to create another line, I hope?"

I recalled what Rachel had said, about the feeling of tearing herself back into reality. "Not any time soon," I replied, with feeling. I shivered again. It was always so cold out here, and I wanted to be warm in the worst way. "Why are we here?"

"Newt is right, to save us all, we will probably need to resort to drastic measures. An anchor can only protect you so much — you'll need to access the true power of your mind, Yvette."

"So I've been told. Ash insists he can't do it," I grumbled, not loving the reminder. "What do _you_ think? Is he right?"

Al's eyes were distant as he scanned the horizon. "Hmm. Quite a lot of variables to consider in this equation. I'm afraid I'm not here to give you advice, Yvette." He moved around me, dragging the toe of his elegant black boot in the foul dirt to form a crude circle. "I simply wish to point out a small flaw in your personality: your tendency to focus only on the short term."

I held my tongue, because he had a point. "OK. I was considering a short-term arrangement with Dali to survive, I admit it. Where there's life, there's hope?"

Al raised an eyebrow as his inscrutable red, goat-slitted gaze returned to mine. "Not even remotely, on occasion," he said. "Let me introduce you to someone. _Tezrian!_ " He brushed a bit of lint off his velvet coat. "You may wish to prepare us a circle, Yvette."

I shivered as the power of the name tore through me, because it was a summoning name — but it felt wrong, incomplete. So did the demon who coalesced before us, skin reddened and aura shredded by the sun. Al's warning registered, and I used Al's crude circle to conjure a barrier around us just in time to prevent the creature's maddened lunge from taking off my head. I gaped in horror as it prowled around, black eyes fixed on us with malevolent, single-minded purpose. It was human-sized, but skeletally thin, covered with red scales. Its hunched body resembled the ancestral form Ash had showed me once, but it was bare of any fur or feathers, and the leathery wings now sprouted from hunched shoulders, separate from the spindly arms that were slowly, methodically probing my circle for weaknesses. It was a surface demon, mindless and nearly barren of soul, though I was loathe to use my second sight for fear of what I'd see. The tattered strips of its clothing revealed something else that shocked me — unlike all the other surface demons I'd ever briefly glimpsed, the demon prowling around us was female.

"Hello, Tessie," Al said, giving her a little bow.

"Tessie" glared balefully at us and gave no sign that she understood. She was bestial, mind gone, and the only expression in her eyes was a long-suffering, endless hunger.

"Al…?" My voice was far too warbly, not hiding my fear. _Why am I the one powering our circle? And why does a surface demon have a summoning name? And why the hell is Al showing me a surface demon, anyway? And why the hell is Tessie so bent on getting into my— oh, shit!_ I flinched as Tessie howled, writhing as she tapped Rachel's line. I winced, because it must have been agonizing with so little aura as a buffer. But agonizing or not, Tessie's attack would have blown through even Al's circle; it was all I could do to hold my own against her maddened blast of undirected power.

The surface demon couldn't sustain the power for long, and I relaxed a fraction as she fell into a fetal position, keening softly. It was such a sorry sight that I nearly dropped the circle to offer comfort, but Al's hand tightened painfully on my arm. "It's a ruse," he said. "Or not. It doesn't matter. There is no comfort for such as her. She'll recover. Can't you feel it?"

"Feel what?"

Al didn't answer, eyes squinting at me briefly before returning to Tezrian. He took a deep breath, and I could almost see him pull his nonchalant persona back on before replying. "Yvette, meet Tezrian. Dali's second mate."

I swallowed, staring. "Al… all the female demons are dead. You said they were dead. Ash said they were dead."

"Of course she is. The only way Tessie would be caught dead in such a twisted shape like this would be if she were, in fact, quite dead. And she is. Died two thousand years ago. Gone, and quite forgotten by her kinsmen, and her mate. And indeed, who would associate themselves with such a degraded little wretch? But her precious soul, so very useful to our purposes — how could we let it go?"

"Al, what the hell do you mean?"

"Has Ash never explained the secret of our immortality to you, Yvette?" His eyes were fixed on Tezrian, but I don't think he saw her. "Following the creation of the Ever After, our numbers were in the low thousands. We bound ourselves together, all of us, souls most intimately intertwined. Easy enough to rebuild bodies. Particularly such simplified forms as these." He indicated the prone Tezrian, who was still panting, eying us with cold, undirected fury. "But to power a _true_ resurrection, to rebuild a shattered soul from scratch with flesh and blood and bone to house it… requires a sacrifice."

I gulped. Yeah, call me cliché, but I was starting to get a sickly cold feeling creeping up my spine and down my arms. "She's still bound here, isn't she? Her soul. Bound to the Collective."

"We _all_ are, love." Al hummed, as if we were discussing the weather, but his eyes were pinched and haunted. "All who made the pact, men and women both. Those whose minds we lost to the ravages of the lines, we sent here. Can't save a mind once it's gone, but a soul? We are_ experts _in all the myriad uses of a soul. And why siphon off our own life force, when we can steal what we require from those who no longer have a use for it?"

"Al, that's… that's…"

"Demonic, love. We house them here, on the surface, in forms that are easily repaired. Can't have them mucking about downstairs with the rest of us, can we?"

"Al." I turned to him, the abrupt motion turning him as well, since he was still rather painfully clutching my upper arm. "Al, is your wife up here?"

I was shocked at the naked expression he wore — anger, mostly, and sorrow. "No." He drew a breath, refocusing on my face. "Understand me, Yvette. Dali is a businessman. He held Tezrian in high regard, but ultimately… she proved to be a poor investment. Even he was not proof against the creeping madness that stole our mothers and wives from us."

I looked behind what he was telling me, and didn't like what I saw, not at all. "I'm not part of the Collective," I said.

Al paused, considering, goat-slitted eyes squinting a little as he considered his next words. "Do you honestly think that we'd allow an untapped demon soul to go to waste?"

"I—" I gulped. Of course they wouldn't. Why I hadn't been involuntarily inducted into this madness yet was beyond me. "Ash wouldn't—"

"And what would the punishment be, do you think, for one who defies the Collective and sets a much-needed soul free?"

I grimaced, because Al had already cut off the flow of blood to my tingling fingers, and might just shear my arm off at the bone if he gripped my arm any tighter. Then I got it, what he was telling me. "You did it," I said. "Your wife. You set her free from this."

Al closed his eyes, but not before I'd seen the depths of the horror in them. "She no longer recognized me. She fought for her life, despite—" He drew a breath, controlling the emotion, though I knew I'd be wearing bruises for days. I couldn't speak, because to offer Al any kind of compassion for his pain would only shatter our latest fragile truce. I waited, thinking about the horrific import of his words. Why was he telling me this? Why share something so personal—

Oh.

_I'm not interfering in your love life, I'm interfering in Ash's._

Ash would have to make this choice, if he failed to protect my mind. He'd have to see me damned, or he'd have to see me dead. Ash had known Celfnnah, had probably been there when Al had failed to protect her mind, had watched her slip into madness, had watched as Al made the choice to end her life. Had seen how it destroyed Al. Had seen what the Collective had done to Al in retaliation, which must not have been pretty.

"Ash—"

"Is young among us, inexperienced with the mate bond. Can he protect your mind? Perhaps. Perhaps not." Al shed the last of his bitter recollections, releasing me to straighten his cravat and tug his lace sleeves just so. I tried to rub out the pins and needles burning through my forearm. "I leave it to you to choose. I simply suggest that you consider… the long view."

Tezrian was up again, prowling around the circle, burning black eyes fixed and hungry for our blood. My mind, still slow with horror, recoiled from the thought of becoming… _this_. What was Al trying to tell me? That this was my destiny? That if I bound myself to Ash, this was what I could expect? Or was it an indictment of Dali, who had not only failed to protect his mate, but was sanguine about her abandonment on the surface, nothing more than a battery for their shared immortality until the worlds collided? What could I expect from Ash?

Ash was afraid. And now I knew what he feared. There _were_ worse things than death. There were worse things than watching the one you love die. The demons would have taken steps, to prevent future euthanasia, wouldn't they? If Ash failed, this would be my fate. If Dali failed, this would be my fate. But _Dali_ didn't give a damn about me, did he…?

"Al."

Al had been staring into Rachel's line, gaze distant once more.. But now he refocused on me, aloof and calm once more. He raised an eyebrow. "You've seen what we came to see, Yvette. We should return."

"Would you do it again?" I left the question vague, perhaps referring to the whole mating thing, or revisiting his difficult decision. That he'd even considered moving on and repeating the whole ordeal with another mate… well, I'd always known that Al had a steel core inside him, I just hadn't even guessed at its tenacity.

His face never changed, but I saw him swallow. His red, goat-slitted eyes fixed on mine. He left his answer just as vague, but his voice was quiet, fervent. "It was worth it, Yvette. All of it."

My breath caught. "Al, about Rachel. If things work out, somehow. I'll still be her familiar, if it would be appropriate. You know that, right? We don't need to have a deal, you and I."

Al regarded me for a moment before inclining his head and humming noncommittally. "Things working out is a tall order, of course," he replied, bare hint of an amused quirk on his lips. That faded quickly as he once again scrutinized my face. "Yvette, I have seen your soul; as deeply as I've seen his. You're well-suited to each other, for all your flaws. I would point out one in particular — a singularly masochistic streak you both share, that you really ought to address prior to making this decision."

I had to admit, Al was a bastard, but he was a smart bastard who was telling it straight, so I shoved aside my pride and listened.

"Have you given any thought to the events of last week? In particular, why you allowed me such liberties with your body and mind? You gave me leave to put you through agony, and while I admit I enjoyed it, I did wonder why you never thought to question whether there was another method."

He was wrong; I _had_ wondered. I just hadn't asked. I knew why; it was just humiliating as hell to admit it to Al. But I figured he knew it too, or he wouldn't have brought it up. "I felt guilty," I said. "You know that. I felt guilty about Ash and let you torture me."

"Hmm. As you say. The two of you are well-suited. Shall we go, then?"

_What the hell did that mean?_ "Wait… what?"

"I am done interfering. Even this much is likely to earn Dali's ire, but I find myself not giving a damn every time I visit the surface and see the remnants of our kin. He couldn't have prevented her demise, but…" " Al's emotionless eyes roved over Tezrian, who had finally lost interest in my circle and was now wandering aimlessly over the landscape, seeking shelter, perhaps, in the dusty, empty riverbed. "We could have, perhaps, found another way. Desperate times, and all."

"Is there anything to be done for them?"

"Not until the worlds collide," Al said quietly. "As they may do, very soon. Don't waste your compassion on the poor damned souls here, Yvette… consider how best you will avoid becoming one of them."

"Al, tell me… do I have a chance?"

Al regarded me thoughtfully. "There's always a chance, love. There's a chance you'll survive. There's a chance we'll manage to save this cesspool of an alternate reality. There's even a chance Rachel will return to me. She taught me this much, you see. She calls it 'the eleven percent.' A slim chance may be a long shot, but unless you believe in it with every ounce of determination you possess, it will be no chance at all."

The doctors had given me a ten percent chance of surviving the aural damage I'd done to myself at sixteen. They'd given me a twenty percent chance of walking again. Hell, once I'd finally been snared by Ash, I'd given myself a ten percent chance of getting out of the Ever After alive. I smiled at his clear evasion, though. He hadn't answered me, but it didn't matter. I'd always believed it.

"And I disagree with their assessment of your mind," he added slowly, voice thoughtful, and my breath caught. "Yes, I took a risk by burning your neural pathways as I did. But where they see _damage… _ I see… _difference_. Rachel, Lee, and Hope, they are demons born of witches and elven tinkering. But you… Yvette, you're something new. I've never seen anyone who can channel the lines as you do. You should have been left a drooling vegetable at least thrice over, and yet here you are. I don't know what it means, but I saw barriers in your mind, and I removed them. You _should_ mate… if only to see what you have the potential to become."

I stared at him, heart pounding. I wanted to ask him more, but the sun had shredded our parasols and was starting to etch and sear its way through my aura as well. The sandpaper sensation was uniquely nauseating, like something alive squirming in my innards, and I was impatient to get out of here. "Al, would you still consider instructing me?" I asked in a rush, before I could think too closely about asking.

He gave me a small, but genuine smile, and a bow. "For Rachel's sake," he insisted, though a moment later he looked heavenward as he added jovially, "Although I admit, I've become rather fond of you, Yvette."

I snorted, finding the thought amusing. Then I blinked. "You_ are_ kidding, right?"

"The best relationships often arise from the most unpromising of beginnings. Remind me, sometime, to describe my infamous first year of marriage." He dusted some of the red, ashy dust from his frock coat with a disgusted expression. "Or the first time Rachel and I met." He glanced at me over his glasses. "You would trust me again, Yvette?"

I swallowed, realizing that for all he'd done to me, for all his cruelty and his unpredictability, I'd grown rather fond of him as well. Perhaps that was why his betrayal had cut so deeply. And yet, knowing how much Rachel meant to him, yes, I thought perhaps I could forgive him. _Eventually._ I met his gaze, seeing the man who had taken so much from me, but had also given me back my scar, my dignity and was now helping me make the most difficult choice of my life. "I'd say there's about an eleven percent chance," I replied.

Al clapped once, all seriousness falling from his demeanor. "Capital! Now let's get out of this foul sun. There's a Coven to be destroyed!"

"Oh, God, you had to remind me." The thought of meeting up with Dali again clenched at my stomach. But after this conversation, I found myself energized and empowered. I knew what was at stake. Once more Al had stripped away barriers in my mind, though it had hurt like hell, and I found myself grateful to him for granting me agency once more. I could face down Ash, Dali, and a whole Coven's worth of angry witches. I even found myself smiling a little, thinking that Dali would arrive expecting easy prey, and would instead get a live wire. "Dali's going to be furious with you, isn't he?"

"Now why would you say that? I brought you out here to show you what will happen to you if you don't make a _practical_ choice," he said lightly, though his grin had a lot of teeth in it. "Who am I to predict how your crazy little mind works?"

I snorted. He'd done a pretty bang-up job of reading it and fucking with it so far. I just prayed he was on my side this time. But even if he wasn't… I got the impression that he _was_ on _Ash's_ side. "Knowledge is power," I said.

"Yes," Al agreed. "Which is why if I ever catch you sabotaging your own reason and hiding under layers of denial again, I shall flay you. For your own bloody good. Are we clear?"

"Yes, _Barexda_." The words slipped out before I realized what I was saying. I blushed, mortified.

Al preened, pleased as punch. "Excellent. Now let's be off."


	37. Evie Goes Wild

_Still here! Just busy. To everyone who left comments, and those who read and didn't, thank you so much for continuing to stick with this story! And thanks again to my patient beta reader Deus3xMachina, who despite going into med school this fall has offered to continue helping me out.  
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**In Which Evie Receives A Questionable Gift**

My thoughts were whirling like scattered leaves as Al flung us back into the lines. I didn't care that he was probably listening in, savoring the chaos in my head. It would take time to process what Al had just shown me, and would take longer to interpret what he hadn't said but clearly wanted me to grasp. Just like that, he'd brought me back to myself, forcing me to think and reason again when all I wanted to do was sulk and cry. But the sheer horror of what the demons had done — to themselves! — to survive all this time had quite pushed out the frustrating disappointment of my own predicament. How long had it been? Ash threw around words like five thousand or six thousand like he himself couldn't remember — had it been even longer?

How many times had they died?

How many times had they _tried_ to die?

My mind flew back to Zee, shriveled and dried out from his sixteen-year hiatus. How many had they lost to madness, knowing they might be the next to fall?

Whatever one might think of demons, one had to admire their sheer force of will to survive this unbearable eternity, in their shattered reality. That they hadn't destroyed what they could of reality, out of sheer frustration and spite, whenever they got the chance was sort of surprising, now that I thought about it. I could hardly be surprised now at how little they'd think of my own precious feelings about the matter of my mating, not when they'd made such sacrifices for their own survival.

Which was actually quite a valuable insight into the entire demon mindset. No wonder they were so… I'd always thought them vicious and merciless, cold and practical. They'd had to be. They did what they needed to do, to survive, without explanation, justification, or apology. Al and Ash had spent centuries enslaving the unfortunate… but only those arrogant "temporals" who called them up first, caged them in circles like slaves, and thought to outwit them. I knew the power they could fling around if they wanted to, and now I knew how much of summoning was simply a game, with arbitrary rules followed voluntarily. To make the chase that much more exciting, and the fall that much more… deserved.

I kind of _admired_ them, I realized in a gush of humiliation. And what's more, I took a long look at my own life, and wondered how much of my own survival instincts were my own, and how much was simply my demon nature. And the rules I lived by — not trading souls, not acquiring anything for myself that would harm others — weren't they just as arbitrary? They certainly made my life more challenging…

_Whatever you decide about Dali, you should humor him until after this little trek is over,_ Al whispered into my mind as we materialized back in Ash's spelling kitchen. _His ego is more colossal than mine._

_How is that even possible? _But silently, I agreed. I hadn't yet decided quite which way Al had been trying to influence me in the first place, or whether I should give his opinion much weight in any case… but I appreciated the extra information. Information nobody else had volunteered… why? Why hadn't Ash explained what was really at stake? I wondered what Newt was up to, as well… were her threats really motivated by concern for me, or was she Dali's ally more than mine? And Dali himself… what would he get out of this? I suppose he wasn't really taking on all that much responsibility, but the rewards and the prestige would be great. So I'd play along with Dali, much as the thought galled me. He… really might be my future mate. It wouldn't do to alienate him or piss him off right up front.

My eyes fell on Ash, and on the expression he wore — or rather, the lack of expression he had when he saw me arm-in-arm with Al, and my heart began to race. There was_ nothing _practical where my feelings for him were concerned. The reality of my situation and the memory of our most recent conversation clobbered me again, now informed by the seriousness of what I had to lose, and I found it difficult to draw breath for a moment or two.

Or perhaps it was the _stench_ that made it difficult to draw breath. Al and I both fell into a fit of coughing when we rematerialized, because someone had cocked up some spell or other, and it had left fine sooty powder lacing the air, along with a gawd-awful stench of rotten eggs. Waving my hands wildly, I fought to breathe as Ash returned to berating Pierce for distracting Adrian. His clenched-teeth curse finally cleared the room — or rather, it left the air somewhat more breathable and replaced the brimstone stench with the more familiar but equally harsh scent of burnt amber.

"Geez, I leave you guys for five minutes and you try to blow up our kitchen?" I wheezed, wiping my eyes.

"Not my fault," Adrian said, wincing.

"Nor mine," Pierce insisted, glaring at Ash.

Ash wasn't looking at either of them, his intent, suspicious gaze fixed on Al and me. I smiled sweetly back at him. I might love him, I might trust him, but I was still plenty hurt about our conversation earlier. Picking on him would be petty, but satisfying. I looked over to Al to find that he was wearing the same beatific, placid smile he always wore when he knew someone wanted to clobber him.

Apparently Al and I had more in common than I wanted to admit.

"Well, we need to get this place tidied up," I said, deciding to take charge. It was still technically my kitchen, after all. _ Heh. Maybe that's what Dali wants — maybe this is all about him stealing Ash's stuff. All part of the endless game…_ "We've got more visitors coming in a few minutes."

Adrian ran over, taking my arm and steering me to a quieter corner. "Evie, are you nuts? Ash told us you're breaking up with him?"

"Ash has a big fucking mouth," I replied, glaring in his direction. Ash gave me a shrug and went back to supervising Pierce and the cleanup. "Believe me, I'm not happy about it either."

"But… what he did…"

"Adrian, I love him, but he's a liar, you know that. He totally lied to you about the spells you two brewed over me yesterday. He won't tell me what they really do, OK? For all I know…" I trailed off, because even if the curses _didn't_ do what Adrian said they did, I had no idea what they _did_ do. And he still wouldn't tell me. They had to do with his bargain with Newt, his bargain to keep me safe at all costs, but if they weren't the curses he said they were, what were they? Maybe I needed to take a closer look. When I got the chance. Which, at this rate, would be next century. "Anyway, it was his idea. He doesn't want to take any chances with my head."

"I don't get it… what's wrong with your mind?"

"Newt told him it's too… messed up." I stopped, because suddenly I was even more suspicious of Newt's motives. Particularly in light of what Al had said: _difference_, not _damage_. Ash insisting he was untried… had he ever looked into the mind of a demoness before? How the hell would he know if I was messed up? Something else Al had said was still tugging at me — something about us sharing some sort of masochistic streak…?

"If it's messed up, then why mate at all?" Adrian asked reasonably, and I blinked, losing the thread of thought.

"Newt says I have to, if I want to help fix the Ever After. And if I don't fix the Ever After, then Ash is going to die with the rest of the demons, which means I will, too." I met Adrian's clear blue gaze, showing him all my miserable frustration. "Not to mention, Newt gets what she wants," I added.

Adrian shook his head, still in disbelief. "I don't get it," he said again. "After all the trouble he went to before, he's just going to give up now?"

_Tell me about it. Ass. _ "He thinks it's his fault. He doesn't want to make things… worse…" I blinked, my gaze flashing to Ash, who had closed himself off to me and my thoughts and was talking loud nonsense to Pierce in an effort not to hear our conversation.

"Well… it _is _kind of his fault, isn't it?"

"A lot of it. But demons… they don't _feel_ guilt," I insisted quietly, speaking my thoughts aloud. It was true. Demons never felt remorse. They purposely blunted their ability to regret their actions, because nothing destroyed a person more thoroughly than guilt. Hell, I should know. I'd been using similar spells myself, off and on, for most of my life. It was pure self-preservation. I knew this, had talked to Ash about it whenever we'd had a moment for self-reflection. Demons hadn't been born the psychopaths they'd become, they'd bent their minds to remove their consciences. Ash hadn't been lying when he said he had no conscience — they'd beaten it out of their own heads. I'd just taken it for granted that while Ash might be a little irked at himself for miscalculating now and then, his actions wouldn't be weighing on his mind.

But he'd just been reborn. His centuries of stored curses were gone.

_He thinks it's his fault. He blames himself for all the damage to my mind._

"Evie?"

I blinked rapidly, reeling. I wasn't even sure if I was right. But what had _I _done when I blamed myself for his death? I'd sought out Al, for the one person I trusted would understand what my guilt-ridden, tormented soul was craving, hiding it under a layer of self-delusion and justification.

What would _Ash_ do? In what way would he twist the knife where it would wound himself the deepest, in the guise of doing what was necessary?

"Evie, what are you doing?" I felt Adrian grab my hand and upper arm, forcing them apart. I didn't resist, only now realizing that my own fingernails had gouged deep furrows in the skin of my forearm. The pain hardly registered. _ Damned demon strength again._

"I— sorry. I just…" I desperately needed to think. I headed for the glyph, eager to be alone for a few minutes, but it was too late. The mental chime of an impending visitor pinged into my awareness, and I groaned in thwarted frustration. Damn this entire day! Couldn't I stop running, or performing, or hurting, for five blasted minutes? I might not require sleep, but I was in desperate need of a vacation from my entire stupid, hectic life. Didn't I deserve five minutes of peace, before the next crisis reared its fugly little head? Didn't Destiny realize I had more important things to worry about than the fate of elven infants and demon girls?

Dali popped into solidity on the glyph a moment later, Brooke at his side. Though my stomach fluttered with queasy anxiety, I kept it off my face. I managed a formal welcome instead, finally remembering the lessons of demon etiquette that I'd learned weeks and weeks ago. Funny how it had never occurred to me to offer hospitality to _Al _whenever he came over, for all his air of highbrow snobbery, but the minute Dali and Brooke appeared I snapped into formality for the sake of self-preservation. We had nothing to offer them, refreshment wise, thanks to our extended absence and the total lack of household staff, but I made do with comfy chairs instead.

Brooke, surly and silent, gravitated immediately to the witches and began conversing with the delighted Adrian in low tones. She exchanged glares with Pierce, but soon included him in their conversation.

Dali, meanwhile, was looking very formal and intimidating in his tailored business suit. The bones of his face had subtly altered, making him look sharper and even more intimidating against the distinguished iron-grey of his hair, and he seemed taller. Had he lost weight? Or rather, had he slimmed himself up on my behalf? Or was the portly previous appearance his true face at all, or just another mask? I wasn't sure whether to be flattered or terrified at the thought of Dali altering himself to be more attractive to _me. Eeek._ "I'm very pleased you're reconsidering my offer," he said, giving me a little bow and a tight-lipped smile. "May I have a private word with you, Yvette?"

I had to swallow first, but I nodded and invited him to the library. He popped out before me, and I gave Ash an eloquent look before following. He gave me a mirthless quirk of his lips in acknowledgement and I felt him slip to the forefront of my mind, with me in spirit even if he was physically staying behind.

Dali didn't spare the room a glance — his hawk's gaze was solely for me, and once again I felt like a mouse without the cover of darkness or greenery. Did he give out those intimidating vibes on purpose? I decided he was, so that indignation could jumpstart my self-preservation again. Years of dealing with demons — not to mention crowds of rowdy students — helped me hide my trepidation under a veneer of calm indifference. I'd faced him down in court, I could hold my own in my own damned house.

"May I have formal permission to court you?" he asked.

I consulted Ash, asking whether this was more than the innocent phrase it sounded like — for all I knew, I'd be agreeing to some monthly installment plan, or a trial period in his bed. Ash merely growled in my mind, not happy in the slightest. _It's not a trick, he simply wants to know if you're serious_, he told me. _And whether or not I've… tainted you._

Ah. That would explain the subtle flaring of Dali's nostrils, as he inhaled my scent. _Checking for rival venom? Ugh. Elf, human, demon… men were all the same._ "You're certain you're… really interested?" I asked, still skeptical that this wasn't all a big joke.

Dali gave me a short bow. "It would be a privilege, Yvette," he replied smoothly, and once again I got that sense of hidden anticipation, hiding just under the surface. My unease grew.

"Dali, I want it clear that this, uh, arrangement, is only open to you. Because the last thing I want is a slew of demons out there thinking I'm suddenly eligible and burying me in lewd invitations and dick pics."

Dali snorted with amusement. "Yes, I see your point. However, that is unlikely, given the competition." I resisted the urge to scowl at the smug bastard as he held out his hand, palm up.

I glanced at it, but didn't take it. "No, I mean, I really don't want this to be public, at all." If I ended up turning him down, I didn't want the world to know. The last thing I needed was to bruise the ego of the most powerful demon here besides Newt and Ku'Sox, let alone the guy who ran the courts. "I don't want word of my… disability… to get out. If I take up with you, it's because you're fucking _awesome_ and I suddenly wised up, _not_ because I'm brain-damaged. Yeah?"

Dali flashed me a predatory grin, making me suspect he was on to my real motivation here. But he nodded his assent. "As you like."

"All right, then, you have my permission," I replied, extending my hand a little hesitantly. I'd expected him to shake it, or kiss it. I did _not_ expect him to bite my damned finger. I gave a surprised meep! of pain and he relinquished my hand when I yanked it away — but not before he'd gotten a good taste of my blood. "Hey!"

_Oh, right. Should have warned you, _Ash said in my mind after I sent him a mental slap. If he hadn't sounded like he wanted to rip Dali's head off before, he sure did now.

Dali's expression was one of an epicure sampling a fine wine. He looked like he very much approved of my flavor, from the half-lidded expression he wore now. I wanted to kick him. "Thank you," he said, flashing a toothy grin at me — or rather, probably at Ash, since I was certain Dali knew Ash was watching. I so wanted to boot him out of my house, but I suppose I _had_ given him permission. His smirking surety that I'd be his within the week was really, really setting Therese off, though, and I barely suppressed a growl.

Without thinking I popped the finger back into my mouth and sucked on the hurt. It wasn't enough of an injury to waste a curse on, though it smarted like the dickens. I gave him a narrow look. "There wasn't venom in that bite, was there?" I asked, though I was pretty sure if there had been, I'd have been feeling more than just pain.

"I wouldn't dare," he said with a crooked smile. _Not yet, anyway_, it said. Therese growled again inside. "Will you accept a small token of my sincerity?"

_A gift? Oh, __hell __no._ "I, uh, no thanks. Honest. You don't need to try to bribe me with something flashy, Dali."

"It's a some_one_, not a some_thing_," he answered. "I'm aware, of course, of your inexplicable aversion to purchasing familiars, but Newt informs me that you do accept gifts, on occasion."

I felt my mouth open, but nothing came out for a few seconds. "Newt told you that, did she…?" Newt playing matchmaker on my behalf was bad enough, but telling Dali how best to manipulate me? Ohh, I was going to hit her so hard that her fucking _ley line_ would be bruised for a week. "I don't want—"

Dali reached behind his back, then produced something baseball-sized that glowed faintly with a magician's flourish. My eyes nearly bugged out of my head when I realized what it was. For a very long moment I just stared at the orb in his hand, quite thoroughly rattled. I did not reach for it — the last thing I wanted was to touch it, if it was really what I thought it was.

"Is… that…?"

"The courts have been informed of the attempt on your life. Given that the perpetrator has disappeared—"

"Huh? Zee's gone?"

"Vanished, though of course we aren't looking very hard." Dali lowered his hand. The little globe of light bobbed gently in the air before me, unsupported but weaving a little as if confused. My heart was beating very fast. "In light of his actions, I have taken the liberty of pressing charges on your behalf. He has seven days to present himself to contest the charges against him, but in the meantime, I give these into your custody."

I took a step back as the eternal dimness of the library was suddenly banished by dozens and dozens of the little glowing lights. I felt my heart clench with dread, horror, and sorrow, and in that moment Al became my goddamned hero for bringing me back to myself enough to hide the majority of my reaction from the demon smirking before me. Or maybe it wasn't a smirk. Perhaps he really thought this was a lovely, appropriate gift to give his potential fiancée.

No. I could see the devilish glint of amusement in his eye. He was toying with me, and would take these little beings back with him if I called him on it, and who knew what he'd do with them? Fine. I could play this game. I put on my best wide-eyed, innocent expression, digging deep into the well of snark for my reply. "Gosh. I, uh… don't know what to say. Demons give dead babies as courting gifts. I keep forgetting I'm not in Kansas anymore."

Dali blinked. "Are they not to your liking?"

"Roses would've been preferable," I replied, voice light.

Clearly, this hadn't been the reaction he was expecting. His eyes narrowed. "I spent considerable resources and influence to obtain this favor, Yvette," he said, voice quiet.

"And I appreciate that. As I would appreciate you_ asking_ me before you decide to prosecute people on my behalf. If I thought Zee was worth the time, I'd have done it myself. This is only going to make bargaining with him harder."

Dali raised his eyebrow. In the dying-sun light of the dancing orbs, which were now spreading around the library looking for all the world like curious pixies darting here and there, he looked like the devil himself in a three-piece suit. I spent a moment appraising him, as he continued to hammer me with his intimidating presence. I wondered what he was trying to accomplish, thinking perhaps he was appealing to my inner demon with a show of his dominance. Therese… was not impressed. Or rather, she was a _little_ impressed, but mostly impatient to be done with this interview before his blatant attempt at emotional manipulation ceased to be any kind of amusing. "Do you think he would bargain with you, given what you are tying to accomplish?"

"Well, once I'd explained the whole saving the Ever After thing, I thought perhaps he'd come around." I looked at the orbs, keeping nothing apart from polite interest on my face. Though they filled the library with their brilliance, I thought there were fewer than I'd seen in Zee's cavern. "Are these all of them?"

"The survivors," he replied.

My insides cringed. Newt killed the rest? Why'd she keep these? Maybe_ she_ hadn't. I didn't really want to know what strings Dali had pulled to get them.

And what the hell was I going to do with them _now_?

"I accept your gift in the spirit it was intended," I said, and Dali gave me a sharp look. "However, if I might make a suggestion? You don't need to impress me with your position or your power. Impress me with some proof you're going to let me retain my autonomy. Then we might have a deal." I indicated the glowing lights. "Going behind my back doesn't sit well with me, never has. I deal with my own problems."

"When we mate, your problems become my problems," he said, voice even quieter than before. I couldn't read him at all.

I huffed. "My life is nothing but problems. I'm handling them. Tell me again: what's in this for you, _if _we mate?"

"You'll prove an interesting challenge," he said, smiling once more. And there it was. There is only one currency more valuable than sunshine in the Ever After, and that is anything that alleviates the boredom of the centuries. And what challenges were left to one of the top dogs of the Ever After?

I gave him a sour look in return, and he laughed. "That's unflattering enough to be true," I said. _I think… I think it will be a long time before I am bored of you_, Ash had said to me, the morning after he'd claimed me and bound me the first time. My heart clenched at the memory, at the sheer honesty of his sentiment. To distract myself, I looked at the dancing orbs once more. "What do I do with them? I can't restore them to life, can I?"

Dali's head reared back, appalled, and his eyebrows shot up. "Restore them to_ life_?" he said, the notion sending him back a step. "Their bodies would still suffer from our curse. What would you _do_ with several dozen dying elven infants, Yvette?"

"Good point," I said, wincing at the thought. It's not like their mothers were still around, anyway. Most of these globes had to be hundreds… thousands… of years old. "But are they mine to do with as I please? Or am I holding them until…" _Until I find Zee and murder the sick little fuck?_ Until the _hearing Dali set up_, I amended, giving Therese a psychic glare.

"If he doesn't show up, they're yours. Until then, best to leave them be," he said.

"What would you say if I said I wanted to set them free?" I asked, truly curious. "Right now? To hell with Zee."

Dali inclined his head. "Given that the courts would likely award you ownership in any event, I would say that was an intelligent thing to do — too much exposure would be bad for your psychic health," he said, voice solicitous. "However, you will certainly find it distressing. I could do it for you, if you wish. When we are mated."

"We'll see." I held back a huff of annoyance. He'd managed to answer without indicating his own feelings one way or another — which had been the only reason I'd asked. And I was almost irked enough to protest that I was not the softie he'd just said I was, but that would mean protesting that I was totally OK with euthanizing a bunch of elven babies. _Shit, this guy is good._ "Fine," I said. "If we're done here, you should rejoin the others while I just… go… put these away, somewhere."

Dali gave me a nod and a beatific grin, and vanished, leaving me alone in the library with the souls, drifting aimlessly around me. My heart shriveled and died a little more, watching them floating around, bobbing here and there. I reached for one, tentatively, then dropped my hand, eyes prickling with tears. I could feel them searching for Zee. The longer I stayed in the room, the more I could hear them in my mind like little distant sighs. _Zee? Zee?_

They loved him. He was all they had.

I'd thought I could numb myself to just about anything, but nothing could protect me from the reality of this abomination, perpetrated by Zee (who had just resumed #1 on my Most-Hated List). And Dali thought this was an appropriate gift? No, Dali was testing me, I decided, and using these innocents to do it. Adrian's story returned to my mind — what had really done in so many of the demon women? The screams of the unborn elven children the demons had cursed. Dali wouldn't want his mate to be so vulnerable, would he? What better way to test her fortitude? _Bastard_.

I knew I had to leave. Ash was urging me to come back, but when I stepped to the traveling glyph, the little lights changed their behavior. Some clustered together, but mostly they swirled around me with little darting, agitated motions. My mind filled with their fear and loneliness, so great that even a stranger was preferable to the solitude. Even with all I had to do, I couldn't bring myself to abandon them.

But the thought of breaking the curses that held them trapped here…? I nearly doubled over from the sudden foul nausea that thought invoked. Dali was right; I couldn't bring myself to do it.

"I'll… I'll be back," I said stupidly, but they gave no hint of understanding. If anything, their movements became more desperate. For lack of any better ideas, I thought perhaps I might calm them with a lullaby. My voice quavered in my aching throat, but I doggedly forced out the ancient, simple melody. Grief made my voice halting and unfamiliar, the tune twisted and broken. Though my lids were closed, the dancing lights had ceased their motion, the red glow increasing as they were drawn to me. Was it working?

_Evie…? Come back. Dali's right—_

I barely heard him in the complex mire of emotion surrounding me. I knew I had to leave, but I couldn't make myself do it, not just yet. They'd been unformed when captured, and remained so — unformed, without language or comprehension, knowing only that they sought someone, something. Most hadn't even words to put to the simplistic concept, or any words at all besides the one being they'd ever known as parent, protector. _Zee. Zee._

But somehow, through the lullaby, they connected to me. And somehow, they began singing with me. Not aloud, but within my mind, their infant minds responding to this gift of compassion with eager, desperate pleasure. I'd never wanted to be a mother — ever — but suddenly I felt so unbearably maternal toward these little lost lights that I almost blazed. Vengeance. They must have vengeance. And peace. I would give a lot, that these little ones might find peace. I had nowhere to send them besides the unknown, and I couldn't bear to send them alone.

I didn't believe in the elven trickster Goddess, not really. Elves got their wild magic from somewhere, but the academic in me figured it was placebo, somehow, that the elves had simply found a convenient belief system with which to control their unpredictable magic. But I found myself wishing with all my soul that she existed, so that I could petition her for help in dealing out justice for these little ones, who'd been destined to die and denied even that respite. The more I stayed in that room, the more the crushing loneliness and despair tore at me, and the more fervently I wished there were something, _anything_, that I could do…

_What the hell are you doing!?_

Dimly I heard my voice humming the tune, but now it wasn't a tune I knew, and the lights around me were whirling now, spinning like a vortex — or perhaps it was me, spinning in a vast emptiness filled with stars, and the melody was humming from within me and around me and through me and lifting me. And then one of the thousands of pinpoints of light paused—

—and focused on me.

Moments later, Ash was holding me. Shaking me. Demanding to know what the hell that had been about, what the fuck curse was I casting, what the hell had booted him from my mind just now? I simply clung to him with wide eyes. I let the panic attack rip though me, scorching my soul to its bare essentials, blind to anything other than sheer, mortal, soul-deep terror. Ash got to relive the encounter through me, and he, too recoiled from my recollections, denying them even as he tried to piece together just what had happened.

Wild magic. Somehow I'd used _wild magic_. Magic the demons had never understood, had never been able to truly best, for all its unpredictability.

Neither of us mentioned the silence, or the thousands of glass shards that covered the floor, or the irrevocable darkness lit only by one of the dim, smut-filled globes in a corner of the library. Or the odd scent, mingling with the burnt amber, that smelled ancient as time itself, laced with the unmistakable sweetness of spices I couldn't identify. Myrrh, maybe?

The encounter had simply been the last straw, in a day that had held one too many emotional twists and turns. What had happened had terrified me on a primal, mortal, soul-deep level, but not because what I'd encountered had been evil, or angry… just _alien_. It hadn't spoken in words, but I knew — _knew _— that it understood everything I was and what I wanted, all in one, soul-sweeping, lazy glance.

_Which one, little demon? _My soul had rung with the wild magic's bemused question._ Peace…? Or vengeance? Choose._

I quailed as more pinpricks of light lazily paused in their eternal humming and turned toward me, curious. The question was a fair one, given my vague, unintentional petition, but whatever this being was, I dreaded being the object of its _full_ attention. _Peace,_ I'd answered quickly. _Take them home._

Laughter, purple laughter with a hint of devilry like shafts of light, arrowed through me, reducing me to the barest speck under its timeless gaze.

_So be it._

The whirlwind around me became a jagged, deadly tornado of shattered crystal, shredding the furniture and my clothing and even shearing off bits of my hair. But though Ash had found me, tousled and tattered, passed out on a pile of broken glass, there wasn't a scratch on my body. My skin was coccooned instead by a fine layer of intricate glowing threads, a sticky cobweb of magic that gradually faced away.

* * *

><p>In honor of inappropriate gifts and Dali's courtship, I bring you this excerpt from <em>Skullcrusher Mountain<em>, by Jonathan Coulton:

_I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you  
>But I get the feeling that you don't like it<br>What's with all the screaming?  
>You like monkeys, you like ponies<br>Maybe you don't like monsters so much  
>Maybe I used too many monkeys<br>Isn't it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?_

_Oh, I'm so into you_  
><em>But I'm way too smart for you<em>  
><em>Even my henchmen think I'm crazy<em>  
><em>I'm not surprised that you agree<em>  
><em>If you could find some way to be<em>  
><em>A little bit less afraid of me<em>  
><em>You'd see the voices that control me from inside my head<em>  
><em>Say I shouldn't kill you yet<em>


	38. No Angels Wanted Here

_For the record… I do love the show I referenced here. And yes, I do want to smack the main character. Often. Repeatedly.  
><em>

**In Which, Amazingly, No Tears Are Shed**

"That was remarkably _stupid_," Ash growled for what had to be the seventh time.

Last time it was to critique my wording of the deal. Which was difficult because there hadn't really _been_ words. The… goddess… thing (it wasn't really female in the sense of being gendered, so much as it could engender… things…) had read my desires and offered me a choice. I couldn't wait to hear what more he had to criticize, but I hadn't been able to properly yell back at him yet. The shock was still too fresh. "The wild deities of the elves aren't exactly known for being_ sympathetic_. What if she'd demanded _you_ as a sacrifice?"

I winced. I didn't want to think what choice I'd have made, if that _had_ been the price. In the middle of that swirling vortex of light, with all those lonely, frightened little minds surrounding me, I might have agreed.

But Ash hadn't felt her, hadn't heard her, and couldn't possibly understand. "That _wasn't _the deal," I tried to explain, voice dull. "She offered to smack down Zee for me, but then I'd still have to deal with the kids myself. She wanted to know which I wanted more. She…" I shivered. "I think she granted the request because she thought it was _amusing_. Or maybe _I _was amusing." I wasn't sure what was amusing about any of it, but then, I wasn't some weird extra-dimensional multi-eyed mind-reading _thing_, either. The elves petitioned this… _being_… for favors? _Regularly_?

They had more balls than _I _did, that was for certain.

"Why didn't you just ask _me_ to do it?" Ash demanded.

"I didn't _want _you to do it." My head was pounding from the panic attack. I'd been totally fine, otherwise, when I'd awoken, though how I managed not to be carved to ribbons like the rest of the place was beyond me. Yeah. Wild Elven Cthulu had a sense of humor, all right.

"Wild magic. _Wild magic_? With all the crazy shit that's going on lately, you have to go invoke fucking _wild magic_? You're the most reckless woman I've ever met!" I jerked away when he tried to shake me by the shoulders, _again_. Either I'd scared the daylights out of him, or he'd been itching for a fight ever since I'd gotten back arm-in-arm with Al. "Evie, do you know what it's capable of? Even the goddamned elves haven't a clue what it'll do, half the time!"

"Geez, Ash, I didn't mean to do it, it just kind of happened." My protest was halfhearted, my heart being too drained from the emotions of the day to really feel much now, one way or another. Besides, yelling would only make my head ache more than it did. And it had been the right thing to do, nobody could convince me otherwise. The little souls were at peace now. What I had encountered was incapable of outright deception. That didn't mean it couldn't trick me; it was a trickster goddess, which meant there would probably be unintended consequences to my actions that would be amusingly ironic (to the goddess, anyway). Or perhaps the consequences would merely be earthly ones — Zee would probably sue me into the ground when he found out that I'd broken his toys, but fuck him.

Peace was not within _my _power to grant anyone, but vengeance?

_That_ I could — _would _— take care of myself.

At the very least, I had been marked, claimed, probably owed the being a favor. Even the memory of that alien, tinkling laughter rippling through my soul made me shudder again in remembered terror. What I'd touched was so… vast… so beyond any frame of reference, beyond description, beyond experience, that my mind shied away from contemplating it too closely. Nobody escapes unscathed from a brush with the divine, and I hadn't even believed in it to begin with. I wasn't surprised that I was a wreck.

His sour look had lost none of its anger. "And you go and have another panic attack? In your condition?"

At that I almost smacked him, but I laughed tiredly, instead. "My _condition_? What the hell, Ash? Since when did I become a delicate flower?" My laughter died abruptly as I glared at him, hurt and pissed off. "You've already written me off, haven't you?"

"I have not—"

"You have too! Damn it!" I did smack him, but only lightly, because my head ached too much to work up a good head of steam. "After everything I've survived? I've had them since I was fifteen! It's not a weakness! I had them when I fucking taught myself to walk again, when I nearly fried Al in Colorado, and when I stood up to an entire demon courtroom! And I kicked ass anyway, admit it!"

"Fine, but—"

"Then how dare you call me weak!"

"I'm not calling you weak!" He threw up his hands in exasperation. "Stubborn, headstrong, and stupid, but I never said you were _weak_!"

"Because I'm not!" Furious, I stood up, then immediately regretted it as the throbbing in my head tripled, and I wobbled a bit. He stood too, just in time for me to fall against him. Ow. Ow-ow-ow.

"It's the strong ones we lost_ first_!" he snarled, in my face now. "The arrogant fucks who didn't heed the warning signs!"

My mouth opened, but the retort wasn't there. _Oh._

"You're bursting out of control left and right—"

"But I'm shackled!" I protested, holding up a wrist.

"You were wearing one of those when you nearly _fried _me," he growled. "Not to mention, Al taught you how to take them off, which sort of defeats the purpose. And here you are wearing them right now… after innocently calling up an elven goddess and weaving a wild elven web so strong that we _all_ could feel it — hell, I'm surprised Newt isn't here right now, freaking out on you. The entire collective's buzzing over it."

_Oh, shit._ My queasy anxiety returned, and I sagged in his arms, seeing his point. "Oh." After a pause, I asked, voice sheepish, "I'm not in trouble over it, am I?"

I felt Ash relax a little, now that I'd stopped protesting. "No, of course not. Weird thing about wild magic — it's tough to trace. But that's not the point."

"No, the point is that you've already consigned me to the surface," I said, but there wasn't any fire behind my words now. I just felt headachy and sad. I pressed my forehead to his chest, letting his familiar scent surround me, but my well of tears was dry.

"I haven't." But there wasn't a lot of fire to his words, either.

I sighed, feeling tired enough to collapse for a week. The thought triggered a jaw-creaking yawn. "Thanks for explaining the whole surface demon thing, by the way," I added, sarcasm muffled against his shirt.

I felt him tense again. "What did Al tell you?"

"He took me to Hope's line, then to meet Dali's ex." I leaned my head back and tried to catch his gaze, but it kept sliding away. "Why didn't you tell me about the resurrection curse?"

He hissed, releasing me, and turned away. I glanced away, too, wincing again at the sight of our former sanctuary. The damage to the library was incalculable. Even though his curse had cleared up the glass and loose tatters, it still looked like someone had taken a machine gun and gone to town on everything that remained. I wondered if the goddess had done it on purpose, out of spite? Or perhaps the little souls had had their last laugh on demon kind. Or maybe it was just a side effect — it isn't called _tame _magic, after all. My only consolation was that while the books' covers were mangled, the contents were probably mostly intact. Couldn't say the same for the writing desk that was now crisscrossed with wild elven graffiti, or the shredded Persian rugs, or the eviscerated comfy chairs.

"There are a lot of things I should have told you," he admitted, looking sulky that I'd called him out on it. Or was that guilt? I didn't think I'd ever really seen a truly guilty expression on Ash's face, but there was a first time for everything. "Add them to my list of screw-ups."

I folded my arms, remembering my earlier set of thoughts. Now or never. "Is that what this is really about?" I asked, pinching the bridge of my nose. I was _this close_ to using one of the precious healing curses to clear up my headache. Pride and thriftiness were the only things holding me back. "Because if you're only handing me over to that… that…" I really should come up with a better derogatory term for Dali, other than _businessman_. "…that arrogant, slimy thug because you're punishing _yourself_, then I'm going to—"

Ash smiled at my disgust, but it twisted with the conclusion of my sentence. "Preposterous," he said.

"Really? Because it looks to me like all the sweet noble shit you said a few hours ago could be… creatively interpreted as one big cop-out."

Ooh, that barb struck home. Ash's mouth dropped open, and though his expression darkened with fury, I saw the hurt behind his eyes. I stomped on my urge to apologize and forged ahead. "No, listen. You're good at lying, Ash. The best. I think you're lying to _yourself_."

"About _what_…?" he said, voice low and furious. At least he was still listening.

"The _right thing _to do. There isn't a fucking _right thing_ to do here, Ash. There's only…" Oh, hell. How do I explain it, Rachel's eleven percent? "Belief. That it'll work out." Then I remembered I was talking to someone who'd lost a war, then been trapped in a hell of his own making slowly going insane for over seven thousand years. "I suppose you can be forgiven for not having a lot of optimism, but it's what keeps me going, Ash." I studied him as he watched me, expressionless features giving me nothing. "It's what keeps Rachel going, and Al going, and if you don't share it—" I broke off, realizing I was on the verge of tears.

Because if Ash didn't believe in himself, or me, there was really no way this was going to work even if I convinced him to stay with me.

"Belief isn't what keeps Al going," Ash said. "Hatred fuels us, when hope is gone."

"Maybe it was before. But not now."

Ash sighed, kicking at something on the floor, and blasted it aside when it didn't move. The sudden curse made me jump. "I t_old_ you, belief isn't going to save you!"

"You're wrong!" I winced — that had come out a little more vehement than I'd intended. Damned head. "It's the _only _thing that's going to save me, Ash! I've seen Tezrian! Al told me about Celfnnah! There's no guarantee, I get it now! But if I'm going to give you up for Dali, I need to be certain that you're truly, honestly convinced that he's the better choice for _me_. Not the better choice for _you_."

Ash stood frozen, barely breathing. "How could you think…?"

"Al. Says we're similar. Think in the short term. Deal with guilt by causing ourselves pain. Look, if you feel guilty about the venom thing screwing with my mind, I get that. It's not like you can just wish the guilt away—"

He made a harsh sound of false amusement. "Sure I can. It's a simple enough curse to twist."

I blinked. "Then why don't you?"

"I'd love to. Thought about it." He looked at his hands, then at the ruined library, not seeing it. "It's just another lie. Besides…" He shook his head with a humorless, derisive chuckle.

"What?"

"You… I just…" He shrugged, ducking his head. "You said once you wanted me to be… better."

Hope flared in me, finally, coupled with fresh pain. I watched him, probed softly at his mental shields to try to get a sense of his feelings, but they were locked tight as usual. "Time to grow up, huh?" I said gently, and he looked startled.

"I'm thousands of years old."

"Not too old to run from responsibility." He didn't move away as I approached. "Or from consequences. Or from the chick you seduced who's crazy about you now."

"It _was_ easier before." He hooked arms around me, letting them fall comfortably behind my back. That strange smile was on his face, the half-bliss, half-wince he wore when he was doling out pain. "You were an interesting, amusing diversion, nothing more. I'd use you up and discard you, perhaps steal your body for a joyride in reality now and then, but you'd never _mean_ anything to me."

"Flattering," I said, resting my head against his chest again.

"Playing the lover." I could hear the smirk in his voice when he added, "You bought it all, even when you told yourself you were being all smart about everything. It was intoxicating."

"Yeah," I said, exhaustion creeping over me once more. He might be a liar, but I'd gotten under his skin. And he'd gotten under mine. Yeah, I remembered the conversation he'd been referring to… Shouting at him at Zee's place. Berating him for being what he was. The truth was… what was the truth? The truth was that I'd fallen for the old Ash, despite knowing he came with a whole host of issues and a really terrifying past that would be difficult to forgive if I looked at it too closely. I could take the high road… but had I been born to this race thousands of years ago, who can say what I'd have done in the name of survival? "I liked the dangerous seduction stuff. I like knowing you give a damn about me—"

He pressed me to his body a little tighter, even as he snorted with disgust. "And you like seeing me pathetic and indecisive now?"

"No." I felt his grip loosen, but I wouldn't let him slip free. I let my hand slide under his shirt, to rest on the marks my fingers had left there so many years ago. "I don't like it. I miss the arrogant SOB who tricked me into marking him. You should probably do the curse. Last thing I want you going all _Gabriel_ on me."

"The… archangel?" Ash asked, bewildered.

"No, that guy on the show, you know? Undead vamp gets his soul back? Falls in love with the teenage demon-hunter but can't ever let himself be happy or he turns evil again?"

"Sounds very… angsty." Ash sounded both disgusted and intrigued. "A favorite of yours?"

"No, I wanted to slap him silly." I pressed my cheek to his chest, felt it shake with another suppressed laugh. "Don't go all dark and tormented on me, Ash. I want my cocky, infuriating jackass back."

Startled, he laughed — a genuine laugh, delighted and loud. Was it the first real laugh I'd heard since his untimely demise and subsequent resurrection? It sure felt like it. "Had enough of this touchy-feely nonsense, have you?"

"For the rest of my life," I said, with sincere fervor.

"Does that include the traditional romantic shit, too? Extravagant gifts over candlelight and whispered sweet nothings in your ear—"

"I'd still vomit, Ash." His chest rumbled with the demon equivalent of a purr, making my cheek tingle. I smiled.

"You know, if we mate, you'll begin to see more of my past, though my mind." His fingertips were clawed once more, and I shivered. "You won't like it. I've done unforgivable things."

"I know. I was there, once, remember? I'm not afraid to see it." That wasn't entirely true.

"Who's the liar now…?" he breathed, though his embrace became even more possessive. "And you'll forgive me for not telling you about the resurrection shit?"

I met his gaze, seeing that smouldering look that I was such a sucker for. "I guess I'll deal with it eventually." I let my hand slide down his belly. "Given enough time and… incentive."

He tensed, groaning as my hand found his hard length under his clothes. I grinned cheekily at him, but he didn't smile back. His breath rattled harshly, and his sharpened incisors poked between his lips. But though I felt the prick of his talons where he held me, he didn't accept the blatant invitation. I felt my heart sink — was he still considering handing me over to Dali? _Really?_ I let my eyes drop and my hand fall away as he said, "We should get back."

Dejected and weary, I tried not to feel too hurt by his rejection. "Yeah." He made as if to release me, but I held on, having one more thought. "Ash, if it's true, and you're serious about this not wanting to go back to the man you were before, then you'd better not run away from anything you've done. You think you broke me? Then don't make me someone else's problem, Ash." I looked up to meet his eyes, drawing his face down to mine as if to kiss him, pausing a breath from his lips. "Step up. Deal with it. Grow a pair, and fix me. Otherwise…?" I stepped back, and after a stunned moment he released me. "Otherwise it won't work. Even if we wanted to try later down the road."

He made another hurt, frustrated sound, stepping away himself. He was silent for long enough that I figured the conversation was over, so I began to walk to the travel glyph in the corner.

"Call it off," he said.

"Huh?"

"This whole… mission thing," he said. "You should call it off."

I stared at his shadowed face, swallowing my first response. The consequences of walking away were myriad and painful: Hope's death, then the death of the Ever After, followed by my own death, even if I escaped the disaster. And that was just the personal consequences, to say nothing of the effect that losing the Ever After would have on Inderlanders on Earth. I knew this. Ash knew this. "You know why I can't," I said.

"I've got a really, really bad feeling about this," he said, barely audible. "Evie, Dali's sincere about taking you as a mate… but he also might be setting you up to take the fall."

"Take the fall…? What fall?"

"If it turns out renewing aggression with elves will come back to bite us in the ass, Dali could blame you for it. If Dali screws you over—"

_Renewing aggression with elves? How would busting into the Coven affect the elves_? "I know, it means the surface, right?"

"No. Not necessarily. It's ugly, Evie." He still refused to meet my eyes, even when I stood right before him. "Newt's bent a lot of rules for you. There are rumors you're unstable."

"Rumors?" I asked, a sudden thought occurring to me. "From someone who doesn't like you? Or Al? Or Dali?"

Ash made an ugly rattle in his throat. "Ku'Sox," he said.

Oh, great. The guy who hated everyone, and had it in for demon women in particular. I groaned. "Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse…"

His voice was urgent. "Your scruples about one woman are noble, but misplaced. Make Brooke tell you what you need to know."

I shook my head furiously. "No. It's a line I won't cross, Ash."

"You just lectured me about guilt. Need I remind you that your guilt has driven you to make some pretty idiotic decisions, Evie?"

I felt my shoulders tense up again, and the headache, which had been easing, came back with a vengeance. "Your point?"

"You don't need to be the hero here, Evie."

I couldn't help it: I burst into laughter at the thought that I was any kind of hero in anyone's eyes. "Ash, I'm not doing this to be a hero!" I'd been landed with an extraordinary birthright, granted, but that meant nothing if my personality was not equally epic. And it wasn't! I'd spent a lifetime afraid of shadows that hadn't even been there, and was damaged enough to require a mental crutch for even the most basic ley line magic. Not exactly the stuff of legends, here.

Not like Rachel.

But then… even Rachel was hiding behind elven silver right now, for reasons I didn't really understand.

"No?" he said quickly, voice triumphant. "Is it that you're afraid you won't be able to live with the guilt of doing nothing, if you walk away?"

"I could walk away," I said. And it was true. After the life I'd led, I knew that I _could_ walk away and I would be able to live with the decision. It might not be pleasant. I'd killed a man to survive, and could probably justify torturing Brooke. My psyche could even have survived doing the job of destroying all the little soul-globes myself. Probably. As Ash was fond of saying, you'd be surprised what you can learn to live with.

Everyone says heroes are those who just don't have it in themselves to walk away, who couldn't live with any other decision.

But to know that you _could_ live with yourself if you walk away, and choose not to anyway?

_That_ was pretty fucking heroic.

"But I'm not going to," I said, even as I felt my face get hot. I was being totally ridiculous, and I knew it. "I'll save this dump if I can, and Hope, too."

Ash just rolled his eyes, shaking his head, but I caught a glimpse of fondness there, under all the exasperation. I stepped onto the traveling circle, arms folded. "Then I'm going to retire to a nice tulpa of a desert beach."

"Sounds great," he said, joining me on the traveling glyph.

"…and you're going to fan me and feed me grapes and teach me to be a demon badass."

"Okay," he said.

"There will be a lot of vodka, and drunken debauchery," I added, nudging him.

"Sure, Evie."

I thought he still sounded too far away. "_Then_ we'll help repopulate the species with dozens of adorable demon rugrats," I said, deadpan.

"Uh-huh," he said… then fell into a frantic fit of wide-eyed, appalled choking.


	39. Unexpected Exclusion

**In Which Evie Loses Control… Again…**

For everything I'd been through, I was almost in a good mood when Ash and I reappeared. Or maybe it was the usual slap-happiness I got when I was so emotionally exhausted that nothing held any weight anymore. The temporary mild perk vanished, of course, the moment I set eyes on the little group I'd left behind and was re-clobbered with everything we were about to do. Dali was acting almost jovial, though the three witches weren't buying it for a second. His hawk-eyes flew to me the second I materialized. I wanted to squirm out of my skin.

_He's going to shit himself when he hears about the wild magic. _Ash whispered in my mind, and I relaxed and smirked.

"So good of you to join us again," Dali said upon our reappearance, bowing deeply. When he rose, his eyes were gleaming with avid curiosity, even if his voice was dripping with solicitude. "Is everything quite all right?"

Therese reared her head in my psyche and my fingers actually flexed in preparation for throttling him, but I squashed down the impulse at the last minute. "Wasn't hearing the screams of the elven unborn what drove many of the demon women to insanity in the first place?" I asked, and even I was impressed at how much ice I'd packed into that voice.

Dali raised his eyebrows, hands nonchalant behind his back, looking innocent as the devil. "Wouldn't do to make the same mistake twice, now, would it?"

He could have been referring to the curse that had undone their race as well as the elves, but read another way… had he just referred to Tezrian? Seriously? Calling his choice of her a _mistake_? Did he know I'd _seen_ her?

Those in the room had frozen at our words, all except for Al, who had been looking down and now slowwwly raised his head to glare at Dali. The malevolence in his gaze gave me a shock of ice down my spine, and I was glad he'd never turned that degree of malice in my direction. Dali just loved to twist that knife, didn't he?

"That depends on what, exactly, your intentions were," I replied. "I sent them home. Was that a mistake?"

Dali's calculating smile widened into wolfishness, eyes narrowed as he evaluated me — intact, sane, glaring at him and not at all undone by his little test of my fortitude. "You didn't break them yourself, though." His eyes flicked to Ash and he inclined his head in acknowledgement. "But you stayed to witness. Splendid. Practicality _and _courage. I didn't think you had it in you, Yvette. I am unexpectedly pleased." Pleased and _hungry_, his predatory look said.

_Are you now?_ I asked, but I didn't have the energy to put it into words, instead having to sit on Therese to keep her from cursing Dali inside out. Literally. I stared at the demon before me, in his façade of a powerful, suave businessman with the ancient eyes, and saw only another man. Devious, powerful, well-trained, and _really_ old, but merely a man. After my brush with… whatever the hell that ancient, bazillion-eyed unearthly cousin of Shub-Niggurath thing was… this little self-important prick would have a difficult time psyching me out with his older-than-thou aura of power ever again. My entire world view had shifted for an endless moment, there, when I felt the chiming laughter in my soul, and I knew that I'd never be truly terrified by anything in _this_ world ever again.

"Oh, no, Dali, she did it all on her own." Ash's voice was amused and careless as he toyed with a strand of my hair, and I shook my head to get him to quit it. "Invoked the goddess and everything."

Dali's jaw dropped. He took off his glasses and slid them into his breast pocket, staring at me in astonishment. "That was you, just then?" He sniffed the air, presumably to catch the traces of myrrh and greenery still clinging to my skin like the cobwebby glow the magic had left behind. "However did you manage it, Yvette?"

"Sang them a lullaby," I said, voice nonchalant. Ash had identified the tune as elven when I hummed it for him, an ancient Celtic song about a mom looking for her lost baby. Why my mom had sung me creepy elven lullabies was beyond me, but they'd certainly never triggered wild magic for _her_. Not as far as I knew, anyway…

"Marvelous," he breathed. "How extraordinary. Once again, a novel solution."

I cocked my head, not flattered in the least. Demons had looked at me like that often, usually from the other side of a circle in which I'd just trapped their arrogant asses, and it never boded well. "You thought I'd get Ash to do it, didn't you?"

Dali merely smiled again, genuine. "Of course."

Because watching Ash commit murder, even necessary euthanasia, would hurt, would chip away at our relationship. Clever. I turned away in disgust, biting my tongue. Cooperation. We needed to maintain this uneasy alliance for the next few hours. I was supposed to humor him, not tear him a new asshole. I cleared my throat. "Shall we get on with our plans this evening?" I asked, frost still forming on every syllable.

Dali inclined his head, and life returned to the room again as the witches began to invoke amulets and curses. All but Al, who was still a statue gripping the table with white-knuckled fingers. He dropped his gaze when Dali's gaze fell on him, though his back had lost none of its tension. If looks could kill, Dali would have been a splatter on the walls a minute ago.

Ash had gone distant again, drifting away to consult with Adrian. Brooke was now gazing at me with such haughty disdain that I finally had to ask, "What?"

"You _destroyed_ them? They were _babies_!"

I lifted my chin, chest aching because Adrian was looking at me like he'd never seen before. Pierce, though, simply looked heartsick. He'd seen enough here to know the choice I'd had to make.

"Zaebos is a twisted, lonely old fuck," Ash said, before I could reply. "'There is no greater love than that of a child,'" he added in a drippy falsetto, as if quoting something ridiculous. He left the rest unsaid, sounding blasé as anything.

"A noble decision," Pierce said quietly. "The isolation of the bottle is… a terrible, terrible thing. Death is kinder." I gave him a grateful look, and he inclined his head with a grave expression.

"Says the ghost who stole a dead man's body so he could live again," Brooke snapped, disgust still coloring her voice and features.

"Says the woman who made a deal to turn another child over to Zee," I retorted, wondering why Brooke's head wasn't exploding with cognitive dissonance. Did she think I had the power to bring a bunch of dead babies back to life or something?

"Well, perhaps you should just kill Hope, too, and all our problems will be solved," she snapped back.

"This is getting us nowhere, children," Dali announced, while I was still busy forcing Therese back into the hindbrain once more so she didn't curse Brooke into the putrid puddle of primordial slime she'd crawled from. "It's time to visit the Coven."

Dali had taken charge of this whole fiasco, and had laid out his plan in stark black and white. As we now had Coven support, it would be an easy matter to pass the standard safeguards that kept people out. Dali was more concerned about demon-specific safeguards, so there would be a period of study before they entered the nexus to undo the shunnings. Given the recent upheavals, only Oliver presented any potential danger, and the odds of his being there, in the inner sanctum of the Coven instead of out schmoozing with humans and calling down the wrath of witchkind on our heads, were low.

And if Oliver was in residence, and tried to stop us? I made the passionate argument that assassinating the leader of the Coven would only prove him right, and that the far better punishment would be to neutralize him and boot him out of his own collective. But the most I could get the demons to agree to was "nothing lethal." Which was something demons excelled at, being _creatively_ non-lethal. Shudder.

"Wait. What's my role?" I asked, after Dali had finished assigning specific tasks to the others.

"Your role?" Dali favored me with a raised eyebrow. "You're going to remain here."

"What?!" Both Ash and I said it, though Ash was merely surprised. I was outraged. "It's my idea! It's my deal! I'm coming!"

"Evie will accompany us," Ash said.

Dali turned to Ash. "We will be traveling to the heart of the Ever After. Do you have any idea of the damage she could do?"

"I'm not an idiot, Dali," I growled. "I'll keep the shackles on. I won't do anything stupid." Al snorted and I whipped my head to glare at him. "I'm _going_."

"She needs to see the nexus," Ash said.

"She can see it another time." Dali's voice was firm.

"Besides, Oliver or his cronies may show up mid-ritual, and I cannot guarantee her safety," Pierce interjected, blue eyes apologetic when I glared daggers at him. Him too?

"Then you'll need me to watch your backs," I growled, impatient and wondering how often he'd pulled this White Knight bullshit on Rachel before she'd beaten it out of him. Perhaps she hadn't beaten it out of him, and that was why they'd been growing apart. "This was _my idea_! Besides, you might need another mind or something. Or at least a lookout, if you're all going to be distracted with Coven spelling at some point."

"If she's to help Newt shore up the Ever After, she'll need to understand how it's constructed and anchored to reality," Ash said, though he sounded more like he was bargaining than arguing on my behalf.

"_If all goes well_, she will have the chance to study it at her leisure," Dali retorted. "Afterward. _Under supervision_."

"What? I don't need a fucking _chaperone_!" Oh great. The headache was back. This was all spiraling out of control. I had to be there!

"Have you forgotten she's tied to our fate now?" Ash said, looking indignant himself. "Unlike Rachel, her life depends upon the Ever After remaining intact."

Dali ignored me completely. "Don't be a fool, Ashmedai. I'm not willing to risk it, and neither should you. She's too unpredictable."

"Charming, fellas. SHE is standing _right here_," I grumbled, almost more irritated that they were treating me like a child than by the idea of being left behind. "Al!?" I turned to my former and potentially future teacher, demanding his assistance.

Al was observing moodily, with arms folded, having not spoken a word the entire time. Now he just smirked at me. "Dali's got a point, love. You do tend to explode at inopportune times."

"Al!" I wasn't sure why I'd expected him to be on my side, anyway.

"But I don't believe Yvette's_ volatility_ should be our main concern. Perhaps we should be considering instead the potential consequences of bringing a new demon, free of the elven curse, into their last stronghold?" Al added, turning his attention back to the others.

Dali made a grunt of agreement and Ash's brow creased in consternation as he looked at me, speculating. "Has Rachel ever been through the nexus?" he asked, looking at Adrian.

The three witches exchanged glances. "No," Adrian answered. "No demon's set foot there in two thousand years."

"What the hell is everyone talking about?" I demanded.

"Elves established the Coven, two thousand years ago," Ash explained. "For the sole purpose of keeping us _out_ of the nexus."

"Not true!" Pierce protested, red-faced. "Ours is a sacred trust to serve and protect witchkind!"

"And a bang-up job you've done of it over the years, runt!" Al's voice was a verbal pat on the head, ruffling Pierce's feathers even more. "Yes, they dressed it up with all manner of religion and rules and pretty words to keep you busy, but what they needed was a self-sustaining little witch collective to power their demons-keep-out spell."

"It's true," Dali said, as Adrian opened his mouth to protest. "And it's also true that bringing Yvette — or Rachel or Hope, for that matter — anywhere near it might have horrific consequences. Should the spells maintaining the integrity of the nexus collapse, it could destabilize the Ever After even further. I'm sure I don't have to explain to you the consequences that losing the Ever After would have on the inderlander population of Earth," he added, looking at the three witches.

"Wait. You mean the elves built the nexus and the Coven and they might have booby-trapped the place?" I asked. Something Ash had said earlier was starting to make sense.

"_We_ created the nexus. _They_ won control and sealed us out."

"And if the nexus is damaged, the Ever After goes kablooey?" So why hadn't the elves blown it up when they won the war and left, two thousand years ago? Why preserve it? Oh, right. Their magic might be partly divine, but it was still powered by ley lines — and Earth would have precious few remaining if the Ever After collapsed.

"Eloquently put," Dali said, cocking his head in a way I couldn't interpret, but decided was probably condescending. "Although 'kablooey' could mean any number of consequences, including the oft-predicted full-on collision of the worlds."

_Until the two worlds collide…_ So not only would we be breaking a witch-elf covenant, not only would demons be retaking an elven stronghold, but now my plan had my buddies messing with cosmic forces holding our alternate reality together. _ Wonderful._ "Well, then how do you know_ you_ all won't set shit off? It's_ you_ guys they were fighting, so it's _you _guys the elves would want to keep out. I mean, they knew you guys wouldn't be having any more kids."

"It's a strong possibility," Ash said. "Wild magic is strongly influenced by intent upon the casting. It could be that Evie is the only demon among us who _can_ enter freely."

"But it's unlikely. Or else Ashmedai might have been entangled by an elven snare when he made his rash decision to join the Coven earlier today," Al drawled, voice bland. Ash started and grimaced, clearly having not thought of this possibility before. "How fortunate for him."

"Which of course is why we need to take some time to_ study_ the weaving before we enter," Dali said, giving Ash a smirk. "If Ash is correct, we'll summon her. If not, we don't take the risk of involving her."

Dali struck me as many things, most of them unflattering, but a man of action wasn't one of them. A man like Dali wouldn't put himself in harm's way if there was the slightest chance that there was a danger we couldn't handle. Right? Then why was he so adamant that I had to stay here…? _Oh._

"You don't trust me!" I cried, voice indignant. He didn't trust me not to _deliberately_ sabotage the underpinnings of the Ever After. _What the hell?_ I _needed_ to be there, if only to ensure that the demons didn't wreak more havoc than the plan called for. Yes, there was going to be a great betrayal, but it wasn't going further than busting up the Coven, not if I had any say in things.

"Of course not," he said mildly, my anger not moving him in the slightest.

"But we have a deal!"

"We do. However, no part of it stipulates that you are required to accompany us."

I just stared at him, bewildered, uncertain, and royally ticked. Oh, sure, he'd wine and dine and woo me, but it was crystal clear that while he respected my power, he couldn't care less for the package that came with it. He might have humored me earlier, but when push came to shove I was just a child… or worse, a pawn, on the level of a potentially useful familiar, nothing more. I should have expected it, but it infuriated me all the same. _Typical. I've been spoiled by dealing with Ash and Al. When did Al start seeing me as a person…?_ "I'm not going to just sit here twiddling my thumbs, Dali — have you forgotten my community service? Just how many—"

"You'll need instruction from a gargoyle before you can use those line-jumping curses you stole, love," Al interrupted, and I scowled at him. How the hell had he known exactly what I'd been thinking? (And how'd he known I'd stolen some of them?) "They only help you navigate if you already know where you're going."

_Shit._ I fell silent, mind furiously circling around for another angle of attack. Not that I really _wanted_ to go — if I didn't, perhaps the world wouldn't connect me to this whole Coven sabotage plot. On the other hand, if there were going to be any way to salvage this situation with the elves afterwards, having the woman who broke an ages-old deal also be the woman who helped save their first healthy newborn could help, right?

_Sure, Yvette. Haven't you had the optimism beaten out of you, yet?_

I tried another tack. "Wait, if it's wild magic that protects the Coven—"

"Evie," Ash said sharply, "Don't even go there. Weaving one web doesn't make you an expert in wild magic."

They were all ganging up on me now! Damnit, maybe they were right. "Pierce? Adrian? Surely you guys don't think I'd screw everything up if I came along?"

Pierce only flashed me a sickly smile, and even Adrian grimaced. "Evie… I trust you, but… I mean… I did kind of have to taser you yesterday. Not that you'd do it again!" he added apologetically, wincing at my crestfallen expression. "But… you know. Why, uh, take the chance?"

"You are living proof of the failure of the elven curse on demons. I am forced to agree with the hellspawn — if anything would trigger dreadful elven wild magic, it would be your presence in the nexus," Pierce added.

_Is that really why you don't want me there, Pierce? Or maybe you just don't want me to hold you to your promise not to try to do in a demon or two if you can? _Aargh. I hated this. Now I was doubly paranoid. I had to cling to the fact that we all had one thing in common: we didn't want to live in a world where the Ever After had fallen and the world had to rely on the small number of ancient, decrepit ley lines that remained.

I stared at the six faces around me, finding an ally in none. Brooke smirked. Dali and Al were smiling placid, satisfied smiles that made me want to break their teeth. Adrian was one big jiggly wince. Pierce just looked grim. Even Ash looked like he'd been convinced. "Really?" I asked, but it was weak. "You all really want me to stay here?" After another long, awkward silence I felt my ego deflate. Given how little anyone here trusted each other, it was crushing to think they trusted me even less. I'd never thought of myself as unstable and unpredictable before. Impulsive, maybe, but now they were making me question whether I was as sane as I thought I was. I sat and rested my forehead in my hand.

"You won't be idle," Dali said. "We shall send our gargoyles to keep you company. Not to learn the lines," he added, and my face fell again. "To discuss finding you an unbound gargoyle to make your own."

"Good luck with _that_," I said, not appreciating the consolation prize Dali was throwing my way. Touching a gargoyle once was enough; I didn't want to be _bound_ to one. On the other hand, I'd never learn to travel the lines otherwise — I'd have to get one sometime. "I doubt there's a lot of willing volunteers out there."

"You should contact Bis, if you can," Al suggested, and though he looked bored, there was a twinkle in his eye. "The little twerp probably has a big brother who's feeling unimportant." He adjusted his smoky glasses, giving me a glimpse of his eyes. "If I know him, he will be found watching over Rachel's goddaughter. Do try to select a 'goyle who's past his fifth molt, Yvette, or you'll be stuck waiting half a century to learn the lines, like Rachel."

I grunted, still unhappy. I probably should have been relieved — after all, if I wasn't there, I couldn't be blamed for the whole "destroy the Coven" sudden betrayal. I mean, they'd blame me, because I always got the blame, but at least I would miss _that moment_ where I knew it was going to happen and didn't act to stop it, and I wouldn't have to see the looks on the witches' faces. But I hated relinquishing what little control I had. "You're really going to leave me here?" I said, still not believing it.

Al exchanged a significant glance with Ash, then fixed his red eyes on me again. "Your familiar's not clothing you properly, Yvette," he drawled, giving me a disapproving onceover. "Perhaps you should use your free time to do some shopping first, at the mall. _Our_ mall," he added, giving me another over-the-glasses look.

I blinked at the change in subject. "What? Are you fucking kidding me, Al? You guys are going to screw over the Coven and you want me to go buy _clothes_?!"

"By Cormel's balls, Yvette, you're not fit to be seen anywhere!" Al waved a white-gloved hand at me, dismissing me as gutter trash. "You'll never impress your future mate in_ those_ rags."

I glared at Ash, then Dali, then back at Ash. They both looked bemused, but Ash had the temerity to nod, looking innocent as only devious demon can. "He's got a point. If it'll keep you out of my closet…"

I looked down, not seeing the problem with what I was wearing. What the hell? Did they all think I was so shallow that the idea of a _shopping spree _would cheer me up?

"And you look simply _exhausted_," Al continued. I knew when I was being dismissed, and I was just about to blow up again when Al met my incredulous gaze once more. "Perhaps you should pick up a coffee while you're there. I hear the Coffee Vault has an excellent elderberry brew, based upon an old elven recipe…? One of Rachel's favorites, I believe."

Now I knew there were only a few unshakable truths in this world. That Rachel would sooner huff fairy farts than voluntarily drink demon mall coffee ever again was one of them. So why would Al suggest...?

Oh.

Biting my lip, I let my shoulders slump in defeat. I had to make it look good, after all. I sighed. "Fine, fine, fine," I said, realizing this was really happening. "I'll lay low until y'all get back." I sighed heavily, feeling every bit the exhausted Al had said I looked. _Hell with it. Let Dali think I was this easily distractible. _ "Ash, would you send me over to the mall before you leave? I feel the urge for a cuppa joe. Then I'll chat with Treble and Cadenza."

I hadn't really talked to Ash's gargoyle beyond an uncomfortable exchange of greetings as she passed through the room — she spent most of her time either asleep or exploring the surface. Ash once told me she was still searching for remains of her lost brothers. I hadn't dug for further details at the time, remembering that the demons had killed all the unbound gargoyles who knew the secrets of line travel. That was probably why Treble was _always _in a foul mood. Though I knew from personal experience that living with Al would do that to anyone.

Al snorted. "There, Dali, see? She can be reasoned with, if you know which buttons to push." I gave him a very sour glance indeed, but his smile was genuine, if a bit toothy. I resolved to purchase a cup of coffee, if only so I could dump it on him when I got back.

After a few more minutes of discussion and promises of regular updates from Ash, they sent me off.

I rematerialized in the demon mall. Nobody paid me any heed. Around me demons and familiar strolled about leisurely, colorful displays beckoned, fake sunlight illuminated the equally fake vegetation, and Barry Manilow was crooning about someone named Mandy. Compared to my angry, racing thoughts, it was surreally calm and painfully mundane.

"Well, now," I said, stepping out of the traveling glyph and past a dozing jump demon. The menfolk were off to lay siege to the Coven, and here I was going shopping for clothing, coffee, and gargoyles. Another day in the life of Evie Sinclaire. "_That_ was anticlimactic."

* * *

><p><em>In case you're curious, Evie sang a version of this old Highland fairly lullaby, based on a Celtic belief that an unattended baby would be snatched by fairies, and sometimes replaced with a changeling. I couldn't work it gracefully into the text, but I liked it enough to include it here:<em>

_I left my baby lying here, lying here, lying here;  
>I left my baby lying here to go and gather blaeberries.<em>

_chorus: Ho-van, ho-van gorry o go, gorry o go, gorry o go;  
>Ho-van, ho-van gorry o go, I never found my baby o.<em>

_I saw the swan upon the lake, upon the lake, upon the lake;  
>I saw the swan upon the lake but never saw my baby o.<em>

_I heard the curlew crying far, crying far, crying far;  
>I heard the curlew crying far but never heard my baby o<em>

_I searched the moorland tarns and then, wandered through the silent glen;  
>I saw the mist upon the ben, but never saw my baby o.<em>


	40. Elderberry Tea and Cookies

_Actually, while not very interesting eaten right off the bush, elderberries can be quite lovely in tea and muffins. I make a delicious syrup out of them for winter months- supposed to be good for you. I've never tried them in my coffee, though. Thanks for reading! :)_

**In Which Evie Gets Scolded  
><strong>

Shopping in a demon clothing store is a novel experience. For one thing, there's only ever one of any outfit. Why should there be more, when anything can be altered magically to fit you? For another, not everyone in the Ever After has quite caught up to the twentieth century. Look at Al, who got himself stuck in a Charles Dickens novel. Or Devi, who still inhabited the Arabian Nights – when he wasn't daylighting as a Disney princess, that is. Demons have a highly developed sense of caste, too. There's not only a thousand time periods to choose from, there's every social class represented. So the overall effect of walking into a demon clothier is like walking into the most decadent, opulent, historically accurate museum of textiles in the world… except it's not a museum, the guy who runs the place actually _lived through_ all of the eras represented. You don't just walk in, pick out something nice, try it on and leave. You get an expert consultation that lasts for hours. And perhaps I haven't mentioned my passing interest in historic garb? Needless to say, I was saving my visit for when I had about a week to enjoy myself thoroughly, and had available all the recovery time I'd need after all the tulpas I'd make to pay for the absolute_ pile_ of clothing I was going to buy. Someday. Not today.

No, today I had to go visit my two _favorite _elves, and ask Bis if he had any gambling gargoyle buddies who wanted to enter the Evie lottery. There was a chance they'd strike it rich and live forever, after all. Odds were about as good as winning the Powerball, I suppose.

The ley line shimmered right where it was supposed to be. In my second sight, it snaked its way through the mall, following a strange, steep trajectory through a fake window and into the door of the coffeehouse. It looked like someone had taken a couple of hooks and pulled a portion of a clothesline down off the surface. I knew it wasn't always there. The demons apparently didn't care, nor had they ever looked into whose place bordered this site in reality. I found their apathy strange, but maybe they just never bothered to use their second sight here. I resolved to ask Quen this time how the hell they managed to move the line around.

Using one's second sight in the Ever After is a bad idea, if you're not a fan of nightmares. The demons strutting around the place were like man-shaped vortices of blackness, and the familiars weren't much better. I shivered, wondering how badly my own aura was damaged by demon curses at this point. I took a glance around, but nobody was paying me any particular attention. I felt around with my senses, ensuring the empty room in reality that was outside of Trent's vault was still there. I hoped Quen and Ceri wouldn't be too mad about me stopping by when Trent was out of town.

I willed myself to reality, and blinked as I came out into absolute darkness. Wait, this wasn't right — I should be in a nondescript, dimly lit corridor. But the moment I moved, motion-sensors snapped on the lights, and I burst out laughing. Trent had apparently had enough of unannounced demon women barging into his house. The corridor had been bricked off with sturdy cinderblocks painted a nice neutral tan. There was a door, too. With a doorbell. No welcome mat, though — that was probably asking too much.

I rang the doorbell, noticing as I did so that there was a faint silver inlay that surrounded the doorframe. As I touched the button, it glowed a cheerful green. After about thirty seconds, there was a click from a hidden speaker, and Quen's voice inquired, "Welcome, Yvette Therese Sinclaire. I regret that the master of the house is still away on business. May I ask, what are your intentions?"

I thought for a moment. Al had definitely sent me here, but he could have had any number of intentions. I knew he wanted me to chat with Bis, but might he also have had something else in mind? Had he meant for me to follow the demons to the nexus? If so, I guess I could ask for a ride to the Great Serpent Mound and try to figure out how to navigate through ley lines to wherever they were now. Hadn't Pierce said they were all the same spot in time and space, somehow? Yeah, no potential for disaster there… Or maybe Al wanted me to fill Rachel in on their plans. Or had he been letting me know to tell Ceri? He'd mentioned elves, after all. Argh. I still didn't know if I fully trusted Quen and Ceri, not after they'd cursed me… but I really could use some advice from elves.

"I, uh… I really need to talk to Rachel's gargoyle, Bis. Is he here, by any chance?"

"Bis? You're here to see Bis?" Quen's voice sounded baffled. "You're not seeking vengeance? Ceri and I cursed you against your will, and you're not here to confront us?"

I regarded the door with a raised eyebrow._ If I had, would I have bothered to ring the doorbell…?_ "Well… do you want me to? I mean, yeah, I'm pissed and all, but I'm not really the vengeance-seeking type." I rubbed my arms against the chill of the basement room, uncomfortable after the muggy heat of the demon mall. "I dunno, after the way you kicked my ass, I think I'd rather be on your good side, if it's all the same."

Quen's chuckle filled the small chamber. "You're quite accommodating, for a demon," he said. "I wouldn't have believed it if we didn't have a lie-detector installed in there."

"Gee, thanks."

"Bis is not in residence, but we can summon him for you. Please, come in. A security detail will direct you to our quarters shortly. Solange has been asking after you." There was a click from the door in front of me as Quen buzzed me in.

Heh. Not quite what I was expecting, but at least they hadn't turned me away because I'd come without Rachel. I pulled on the handle and the door opened easily, leaving me in the corridor that I remembered. A sick feeling of remembered panic fluttered through my gut. But the guards that arrived, though armed and businesslike, didn't come running at me with drawn weapons, and there were only two of them. I relaxed a fraction, smiling at the thought that I had at least one true friend waiting to see me.

I followed the silent staff through the maze-like corporate lair, seeing far more of it than I had last time. No doubt about it, Trent was positively _loaded_. We left the office building and crossed the gorgeously manicured lawns, cutting across the garden in which I'd met Hope. I realized with a start that we were heading for Trent's actual mansion, not the various conference rooms I'd seen before. I swallowed, feeling a little nervous and even more flattered. Being allowed in on sufferance, escorted by armed guards, was one thing, but it was another to be invited into Trent's home.

Halfway through the garden we were met by Quen and Solange. The young woman darted forward on seeing me, and greeted me with a bear hug, followed by two swift kisses on either cheek. I returned the greeting happily, taking a step back to look her over. She'd gained weight in the month since I'd seen her. She'd also cut her hair, and it suited her better than the girlishly long tresses Ash had preferred. "Evie!" she cried, in English that was only slightly accented. "So good to see you!"

"You're learning English," I said, smiling so hard my cheeks ached. Had it been so long since I'd smiled that my muscles had atrophied? "You look beautiful. I've missed you so much." I turned to greet Quen, whose smile was understated and wary, but not unkind. "It's good to see you too," I said. "Now that my arm's stopped hurting, anyway."

"I do apologize, Miss Sinclaire. Come, Ceri is eager to talk to you. She called Belle for you."

"Belle?"

"A fairy. She's watching Jenks' children while Jenks, Ivy, and Rachel are off on the road trip with Trent. She says Bis is out chasing pigeons, but would call when he got back." He turned to lead the way toward the rambling manor house, and Solange grasped my arm like I was her oldest school friend and tugged me along.

"I didn't know gargoyles ate pigeons," I said, fighting off the feeling that I was suddenly living someone else's life. Evie Sinclaire didn't have friends who smiled at her like that, and Evie Sinclaire certainly didn't have friends who knew rich elves with stables and manicured gardens. I could almost feel… safe… here.

"They eat anything," Solange said. "Their bellies, like…"she searched for the words, "like ovens, big fires that eat up anything, even rocks."

My eye was caught by a flash of color near the base of the path, but it was gone before I got a proper look. Too big to be a hummingbird, too green to be an animal. A pixy, maybe? "I don't know much about them. But apparently I need one." Both Quen and Solange stopped to look at me, and I blushed. "I'm not going to steal one, if that's what you're thinking! I was hoping… maybe… Bis had a friend...?"

We resumed walking as I spoke. "Is it vital you find one today, Miss Sinclaire?" asked Quen.

"You can call me Evie, Quen. And not necessarily today, but soon. Maybe really soon. I don't know how long this bonding thing takes. Do you?" I asked Solange.

She shrugged. "I've never seen it. All the demons found their 'goyles long ago." She fell silent, eying me with concern. "Kavi's training you, then? Still?"

It was still weird to hear her refer to Ash by a different pet name, but she always had. "Actually, Al's going to be training me."

Solange hissed through her teeth, in a manner I hoped was sympathetic. "Good luck with _that_," she said.

"How does Rachel feel about this…?" Quen asked, and if there was more than simple curiosity in his voice, I didn't detect it.

"I dunno. Part of the reason is so I can train her later. So she doesn't have to be homeschooled by Newt. I haven't really talked to her since…" Since she'd put on the bracelet… a conversation I still didn't remember. I changed the subject, asking Solange how she'd been faring, and she chatted happily at me for the rest of the walk. Apparently Ceri knew the curse the demons used when they wanted to pick up new languages fast, and that explained how Solange was nearly fluent in only a month's time. Neat. I promised myself I'd learn that one, too.

We'd reached our destination, and Quen swiped a card in front of a grey box before typing in a numerical code on a keypad beside it. The door clicked open, and we entered the amazingly opulent main house. I won't try to describe it here, but suffice it to say that Solange had scored herself a pretty sweet gig, nannying here.

Ceri and her daughter Ray were hanging out in a huge living room, with a sunken area in the center that was currently being put to use as a dance stage for a four-year-old. Various stuffed toys were arranged on the cushions that bordered the impromptu theater, and Ceri was recording her kid with a small video camera. The show was put on hold as Ceri rose to greet me, though it soon became clear that the adults weren't going to be able to continue any kind of discussion until Ray had badgered us all into watching the rest of her performance. I watched the serious-faced little elven girl as she skipped and pirouetted to a Loreena McKennitt song, again feeling like I'd suddenly dropped into someone else's life.

Then Ray crinkled her nose at my stench, and said, "You smell like burning."

Ceri looked mortified, but I grinned at the kid's honesty. I made a show of sniffing my arm, then grimacing in exaggerated horror. "Oh, wow, _eeeew_. You're right!" I waved at the air, trying to bat the scent away, and Ray giggled.

"Yeah, it's pretty bad." She sounded sympathetic. "Rachel smells like that sometimes. I make her wash off."

"Cookies?" Solange said, having returned from the kitchen with a tray. "Ray, why don't you come with me…?" Her voice was stern, but her tight lips were hiding a smile.

Ray snatched a cookie from the tray, then shook her head, looking scandalized, when I reached for one too. "_Wash_ your _hands _first," she admonished, then trotted off to follow Solange.

I managed to hold it in, but the laughter burst from me the moment she was out of sight. "Oh my God, the kid's adorable."

We chatted about inconsequential stuff for a few minutes as we munched on tea and cookies, but there was too much we all wanted to know. "Any news on Rachel and Trent?" I asked, as Ceri refilled my teacup with something bracing and scented with...yes, elderberries. Heh.

Strands of the lovely woman's wispy blond hair floated like cobwebs as she shook her head. "Only that they're making their attempt tonight."

"Tonight? Really?" Wow, it was a Series of Significant Events tonight, wasn't it? "Is Rachel still wearing the bracelet?"

"Trent was trying to convince her to take it off, now that the demons know she's alive." Ceri gazed levelly at me. I searched her face for any hint of accusation, but she simply looked serious. "May I ask just how Al found out about her?"

I explained what had happened, and how I'd eventually learned the details from Ash's reading of Adrian's memories. She looked very grave as she listened, though she smiled a little when she heard that I'd relayed her words to Al. "I had no idea Rachel would ever have marked someone," she said, looking down at her teacup. "Of course it should have occurred to me… but no matter. We did you a great wrong, Yvette. I won't defend our actions."

It wasn't an apology, but the admission eased my mind. I smiled, feeling a little more tension slipping away. I wanted so badly to trust her, even after knowing that she'd made the decision to curse me because she put Rachel first. Rachel was her friend; I was merely an ally, at best. "Could you take the curse off? I know mostly what happened, but I'd like the memories back."

"Certainly," she said. _"__Veritas numquam perit__."_

_Truth never perishes. Nice. _ I didn't feel anything as the curse uncoiled and fell away from my mind, but when I thought back to that day in the conference room, it was all there. Drinking coffee. Chatting with Adrian. Rachel walking in. Everything occurring exactly as Ash described, only colored with the full range of my emotions. I turned my thoughts aside before I got to the bit where Quen and Ceri pounced me; I'd examine them at leisure later. "Thanks."

"I owe you a boon. Something of equal value to the memory we stole from you," she said.

"It's fine, really—" I said, as Quen bent to retrieve his humming cellphone from the table where he'd left it and brought it to his ear.

"Honor demands it," she replied firmly. A glance at Quen showed him nodding in agreement, even as he murmured to the party on the other end of the line.

"This is an elf thing?" I asked, then paused. If I got a boon, I'd be a total idiot to just throw it away. Anyway, it might be really insulting to not acknowledge a debt, too. "Actually, I could use some advice on that front. About elven culture, I mean."

Ceri looked interested, and Quen's dark eyes were curious as he held out his phone to me. "Pardon the interruption, but Bis has returned."

Nodding my thanks, I took the phone and greeted the gargoyle. "Uh, hi. I know you don't know me, but I was hoping you could help me. I don't really know how to say this, but… I'm a friend of Rachel's. Evie Sinclaire? I'm a demon, too."

"Heard of you," he said, almost breathless. Did he sound _eager_?

"I, ah, that is, Al, my future instructor, says I need a gargoyle to jump the lines. So I need to bond with one, like you've bonded with Rachel. I know it's unlikely, but… do you know anyone who would be interested? I promise I'm not like—"

There was an odd, startlingly loud grinding sound, like someone tumbling rocks, and I had to hold the phone away from my ear for a second before I understood that Bis was laughing with excitement. "Yeah! Yeah I got someone. You stay there, we'll be over as soon as it's dark!"

There was a click, and I stared at the phone in bewilderment. Dark? Of course...gargoyles slept during the day. The adults could stay awake, and apparently Bis could too, but whoever he wanted me to meet was young enough to turn to stone in the sun. "Not the reaction I was expecting," I said. I glanced at the clock. The demon gang had headed out around midnight, Spain time, which meant we still had about an hour before sunset here. "I thought gargoyles hated demons."

"Not at all. In ancient times, gargoyles used to compete for the honor of bonding with a demon, so they could sing in the lines forever. And they all like Rachel very much. She treats Bis like a member of the family, not like a slave." Ceri took the phone and handed it back to Quen. "Also, I suspect that Bis has an ulterior motive… and her name's Glissando."

I had to chuckle a little. Oh, boy. Yeah, they'd be young and immortal together, as long as their demons were alive. I suddenly wondered if gargoyles had as many silly romantic notions about demons as humans did about vampires. Not the sexy stuff, obviously, but the idea of scoring a chance to live forever, regardless of the price or consequences. "I see. I wonder what her family will think about this idea?"

"I'm sure you'll find out," Ceri said, smiling. "You had an elven matter you wished to discuss?"

"Yeah." I shoved aside the sick feeling in my gut and forced myself to say it. "You, ah, know that I sort of killed someone in self defense, right?"

"Shane Quinlin, second cousin to Ellasbeth Withon." Quen's voice held no tone whatsoever. "Adrian was kind enough to share the recording with us."

Sheesh, had _everyone_ seen my flailing, half-drugged out battle in my backless nightgown? Why didn't Adrian just post it on YouTube, while he was at it? I blushed, even as I winced. "His aunt Sienna told me she'll hunt me down with dogs." The two elves nodded, as if this were the most rational response in the world. "She doesn't give a damn that he was trying to kill me!" I added, but their expressions didn't change.

"It matters not the circumstances," Ceri said. "You attack one man, you're attacking the entire family."

"So… OK, I guess I don't really care, except that I want to avoid war with elves or anyone else, and if I ever get to live under the sun again I'd like to spend new moon nights snug in bed, not running for my life. So how do I make it up to the family, then? Apologies weren't accepted."

"No, they wouldn't be." Quen scratched his chin thoughtfully, looking at his wife. "You could offer yourself in servitude," he said.

"You're joking, right?"

"No. You have to understand, our traditions are based on honor, not justice. You're not affiliated with a noble family, so you are weak." I bristled, but Quen clarified, "By that, I mean that by tradition, you have no recourse."

"So I was supposed to just lay down and die?" I demanded.

"Yes. Or suffer the wrath of the family. However, if you survive whatever retribution they mete out, then it's done. A second strike would only betray their weakness."

I suppressed a sigh. "What if I decided to declare _myself_ a warlord, party of one, and demand restitution from them? Bad idea, huh?" I concluded from the shared wince on their faces. "So any time an elven family thinks I'm dangerous, and they send an assassin after me, and I don't curl up and croak, it's _my_ fault, and I've offended _them_?"

Ceri refilled my teacup. "Pretty much. But if you ally yourself with a powerful family, any attack on you is an attack on that family. It's why Rachel doesn't have to deal with elven assassins any longer. Of course, that may change after tonight, but it's unlikely — not with a pre-set challenge and terms."

"So that's one way to fix it. Join the family, and then it's just infighting, to be settled between two people? But of course I'd be bottom rung, even if they agreed, which is totally unlikely because I'm their ancestral enemy." I didn't even want to consider what they'd have me do to prove my loyalty to their family… probably it would involve crossing moral lines that even the family lawyers would consider unethical. Yay. "The only other option is to simply survive whatever Sienna dishes out?"

"That's the idea—"

"So if I do more than just survive — if I defend myself from her damned hunt — does that then start an all out war? Let's say that Sienna ends up tripping over one of her own hounds and breaking her neck — is that my fault too?" My voice rose, sounding ugly and a little hysterical.

Ceri laughed, and it was a beautiful, calming sound. "No, of course not. The Hunt is the trial. There are no rules. Survive the trial in whatever manner you choose, and you are untouchable." I relaxed a little, though it still didn't sound like much fun. "At least until you draw their attention again." I felt my shoulders tighten and my fists clench, and I sighed an exasperated rattle into my teacup. "You could ally yourself with Trent, as Rachel has. By becoming godmother to Ray, she is officially under his roof, and any unprovoked attack on her would be an attack on him. His family line is ancient and very respected. Any elven clan would think twice before attacking Trent."

I blinked, because it honestly hadn't occurred to me that Ceri's little family would even consider taking me in. "Oh. Um, would he do that?"

Ceri smiled serenely. "We can't speak for him, of course, but I believe that we've seen enough of your heart and your good intentions. Your demon allies, however, will have many objections, I'm sure."

I grunted, thinking of Dali's response. I could already hear him saying no mate of his would be having anything to do with elves, and then… no, it was no good, even my imagination went red-faced with indignation after that. Ash? He'd probably just roll his eyes and say it was cute. "You have no idea," I said. And what the hell would Trent ask me to do, if I affiliated myself officially with his crew? I wasn't a demon godmother to his kids, after all. I'd be an employee of an elven crimelord. I shivered. Something else she'd said clicked in my head. _Equal value._ "What if I saved Hope's life? Wouldn't saving one member of the family make up for my role in another's death?"

Ceri's smile turned mischievous. "Now you're thinking like an elf," she said. "I'm certain a case could be made in your favor. Hope was the daughter of much higher-ranked family. Save her life and you could be in the clear. Shane's family may object, but private vendettas against you would not have the support of the clan. You could demand retribution in the event of an attack."

I could see how it worked, sort of, even though it chafed at my modern… human… sense of justice. "So I guess apologizing any further is pointless."

"It doesn't hurt," she said gently. "The elves of today are all just as much a product of modern human culture. But we remember our roots, whereas witches have forgotten theirs. Speaking of which… Yvette, do you know what on earth is going on with the Coven of Moral and Ethical Standards?"

"Other than that Oliver's gone batshit?"

"Oliver?" Her confusion was clear. "No, I was speaking of the woman." She paused, searching for the name. "Vivian. Wanted, as of this morning, for using demon magic on three people? _Our_ people? Presumed armed and dangerous? The whole elven community is in a panic over having a Coven member turn on them."


	41. Evie's Gargoyle

**In Which Good Parenting Is Discussed and Observed**

My heart lurched. "Oh, no." I guess the cursed elves had been discovered. I suppose it would have been too much to ask for Viv to revive them before she ran off to her new life as a wanted criminal…? Cliché as it was, I slapped my forehead. "What happened?"

"Well, she was poking around some clinic in Washington State, and the elves who worked there subdued her so they could claim the reward for her capture. She escaped, somehow. Her car was sitting there in the middle of the road with three men who were alive but under a sleeping curse nobody's been able to break. There's no doubt the curse is demonic in origin. So the official line is that either she bought the curses from a demon, or she got help from one to escape. They're still looking for her. Given all the signs of demon activity, though, they're assuming she is hiding out in the Ever After — or was kidnapped."

I gaped. I'd honestly expected Vivian to rat us all out. _But she hadn't. _She'd just… run. And leave it to Ash to pick a curse that wouldn't just wear off. Dang it! "Oh, hell. Adrian's going to be… oh, God, he's going to want us to go rescue her."

Ceri looked merely worried, but Quen was giving me a side-eye that said he knew there was more to this story. "It had better be soon," he said. "If she's found, Oliver's ordered her brought to their headquarters for sentencing, and many believe that he plans to use the traditional punishment for Coven members caught consorting with demons."

My mouth went dry and my hand managed to knock my teacup into my lap along with half a cookie. I yelped and stood, brushing at my lap in an absurd, useless gesture. "Seriously? Do you even know what that _is_?"

"It's what they did to Rachel's friend, Pierce. They'll bury her alive." Ceri handed me a napkin.

"It's barbaric! There's no way he can get away with that!"

"He can if she simply disappears," Quen said. He faced me, arms folded. "And not just Vivian. You, Rachel, and the other rogue Coven member are to be arrested on sight, and he'll bury all of you if he thinks he can get away with it."

"Oh, goodie. As if shunning and banishment weren't fun enough." Hell. Vivian wasn't my favorite person, but given my own history I couldn't help but empathize with her predicament. I wondered how much I should tell them about the whole Coven thing — or whether I should tell them at all. "This is my fault. I should have just had Ash friggin' kidnap her. Adrian would've been ticked off, but at least she'd be safe." The two elves were looking confused, so I elaborated, "Ash is the demon who cursed the elves kidnapping Vivian. We were helping her escape, but… she didn't want to come with us. I told him not to kill them, so the curse he used on them _should _be breakable."

Two keen stares bored into me, and holding out on them was suddenly too much damned effort. Besides, if demon interference was about to set off a war with witches and elves, I supposed they should know. It's not like they could warn Oliver and send him running back to Coven HQ to stop them — not if Oliver was already there! I found myself spilling the entire sordid tale, from Brooke's reluctance to Adrian's slow seduction to the Dark Side. The only thing I left out was the demons' intention to destroy the Coven entirely.

When I'd finished, Ceri and Quen were still staring at me, wide-eyed. They glanced at each other, and Quen shook his head. "Why didn't you just torture the woman?" he asked. "It seems to me that this is one situation in which it is entirely justified."

My jaw dropped. "You too?" I asked, throwing my hands up. "Laying aside the utter vileness of the suggestion, it's not like I'd get reliable information out of her! Not under duress!"

"Use a truth amulet to rule out falsehoods," Ceri said quietly, though her gaze on me was still keen and measuring.

I deflated. "No. It's not about her, it's about me. I'm not going to do it. And you can't tell me that _Rachel _would stoop to torturing a woman for information, either." I glared defiantly at the elves, daring them to contradict me. But while Quen just made a "whatever" gesture, Ceri smiled more warmly than I'd ever seen her smile… well, at least not at _me_.

"You truly are unique among demons," she said. "I hope you can hold onto that through your training, and remember who you are."

I shivered. Ceri had unwittingly hit on exactly what I feared most, on multiple levels. "Yeah. Me too. Will you pass this on to Trent and Rachel, if they happen to check in with you? They should know… just in case my demon buddies do something stupid."

"That's inevitable," Quen said.

The hour until sunset passed far too quickly. I was unaccustomed to letting my guard down — even my interactions with Ash of late lacked the free, easy intimacy they'd once had, and of course there wasn't another soul in the Ever After that I'd trust as far as I could curse them. But strike those walls with genuine kindness and they toppled into rubble. Ray, in particular, seemed inexplicably attracted to me despite the fuss she'd made over my stink earlier, and showed me everything she could lay her hands on. Ceri had been teaching her about the plants in the garden, and the academic in me was amazed at the girl's memory. I asked her questions and she answered them in a girlish voice that alternated between solemn and excited and far too loud for the quiet evening.

Solange got to hear the story of everything that had happened since her departure, too. I wasn't quite sure how to explain my… potential disability, and I wasn't sure the secret of the demon's immortality was for me to share. But the drama of Ash's death and resurrection was entertaining enough, and both of them gaped as I explained that I was being courted by Dali. Their twin horrified expressions were not exactly reassuring.

"At least he didn't say he wanted kids," I said, trying to project more blasé than I felt. My eyes fell on Ray as she pressed something into her father's hand, then ran off down a path as the first firefly of the evening tempted her. "Can you imagine me trying to raise a kid?"

"Why not?" Solange demanded. "Why not you?"

I laughed, mind still shying away from the responsibility. Put an impressionable mind under my care? Hell no, I'd fuck up and someone else would suffer for it. No way. "If you haven't noticed, I'm a couple of prunes short of a fruitcake."

Ray came over and I had to take a few minutes to explain that no, I didn't actually have any fruitcake, much to Ceri's amusement. As the girl wandered off again, looking crestfallen, I made a gesture that summed up the interaction. _See? I'm hopeless at this kind of thing_, it said.

"You ask me, they are only making you_ think_ you are crazy," Solange said, folding her arms and eyeing me suspiciously. "And it's only working because you _want_ to believe it."

My mouth opened, but the cool evening air seemed to dust my skin with crystals of ice. No. Surely Ash wasn't lying to me about _that._ I wriggled uncomfortably, but the crawling sensation didn't leave me. "Even if you're right, I'd still be a terrible parent," I said, thinking back on all those students I'd been so tough on, of all the times I passed out in some irresponsible stupor, of all the panic attacks that regularly mowed me down.

None of which really described me lately, did they…?

"You are joking with me!" Solange looked like she wanted to smack me, was actually clutching my arm in a painful grip. "No, you cannot be such an idiot. I could kill Kavi for reducing you to this… this little uncertain shell of a woman!"

I gaped at her. "What?"

"The woman I met took no shit from him. You played his game and you beat him at it. Now you question everything you are."

"A lot's happened. A lot's changed. Even Adrian's worried about me." But my mind returned to the little lost ones, trapped in their beautiful little glowing prisons of crystal, and how fiercely they'd lit some long-unused emotions. Even now, my eyes prickled at the memory of those doomed little ones, who'd lived so long beyond their already artificially truncated lives. This war had created so much unnecessary sorrow, visited most heavily on the most innocent of both sides. I sighed, feeling the weight of my life trying to sneak back onto my shoulders. I shook it off, holding it at bay for just a little longer. "So I should add a kid to the mix, raise it in the Ever After… is what you're saying?" I asked, trying for flippant.

"Idiot," she scoffed again with a roll of her dark eyes, somehow giving it that same twist of affection and exasperation that I got out of the word "ass" whenever I used it on Ash. It sounded far more sophisticated in her French accent. I couldn't be angry at her, and found myself snickering instead.

"I guess the question's really whether Ash would make a good dad," I said, turning the idea over in my head. And shuddering, not because I thought he'd be especially cruel, but because I just couldn't picture him taking fatherhood seriously. But then, given his recent change of heart… I blinked. _What the hell was I thinking?_

Quen put a hand to his ear, tapping the nearly invisible earbud he wore to communicate with his guards. "Bis has arrived," he said after a moment. "He shall be here shortly."

Thank _goodness_. I was more than ready to kiss this disturbing set of thoughts goodbye. It was time for a whole new set of disturbing thoughts!

With a loud leathery flapping of wings, four gargoyles alighted onto the path before us. Two of them were massive, fully grown adults. One was the size of a large Clydesdale — if the horse was standing on two legs with extraordinary batwings outstretched, and had fangs longer than my fingers. The other was even bigger — even crouched, he loomed twelve feet high at least. Eyes the color of banked red coals glowed at me from grey-skinned, lightly furred faces, and black-tufted tails lashed like those of angry cats. They were both males, probably well into their second or third century, though they hadn't suffered nearly the weathering that I'd seen on older gargoyles in the Ever After.

Bis, I assumed, was the little one that landed upside down in Ray's outstretched arms with a tidy little flick of his wings, getting a girly coo and cuddle before Quen handed her over to Solange with a request to send her off to bed.

The last was the size of Bis, just a little pup the size of a large housecat. Her tail had a black tuft, and her half-lidded eyes glowed yellow, but that was the only outward indicator of her gender. The smaller of the adults held her firmly by the leg as she perched sullenly on his shoulder. The bleary-eyed youngster held his ear for support, fighting not to yawn and looking like she could use some serious coffee. The gargoyle who owned the shoulder was glaring at me with a look that said if he were human, he'd be holding a shotgun right up my nose.

"Miss Sinclaire?" Bis said, alighting before me, and I nodded. "I'd like you to meet Glissando."

Glissando stifled another yawn and blinked rapidly, her face hopeful. "Nice to meet you!" she said, voice low and rough but still higher than Bis's.

"And this is my dad, Etude." Etude nodded at me. Bis continued, "…and her dad, Crescendo."

"No," was all Crescendo said, continuing to promise me nasty squashy death with his eyes.

"Da-a-a-a-ad!" I'd heard that exasperated protest from the throats of every teenager, everywhere, ever. I forced myself not to smile.

"No."

"This is awkward," I said, meeting Crescendo's gaze with an apologetic smile. "Look, I'm not interested in kidnapping anyone. I don't want any trouble. I'm not even sure how this works. Besides—"

Crescendo and I were on the same page. "She's too young. She's barely reached her fifth decade!" He and his daughter glared at each other. "Too young to be making lifelong commitments, not to _you_," he glared at Bis now, "and certainly not to this_ demon_!"

I could sympathize with that, for sure. "Glissando… I can't help but feel your father's right—"

"I'm not a pup anymore!" she shouted, finally tearing herself free of her father's grasp. With a loud fluttering she hovered just out of reach, hands on her haunches and yellow eyes glowing with ire as she faced her dad like an angry stone fly trying to menace a puma. "I'm _fifty-one!_ That's plenty old enough to leave the belfry and make my own decisions!"

Bis launched himself into the air to join her, taking her hand. "We've known each other for all that time. We know what we're doing! She's going to be my life-mate."

The two teens and their parents continued to bicker, with the adults trying very hard to convince their kids to stay kids just a little longer, and the kids trying very hard to convince their parents of the epic seriousness of their mutual feelings. Clearly Bis and Glissando were the first teenagers _ever_ to be _so_ _much_ in love. I got the sense that their parents didn't disapprove of the relationship, but absolutely did not like the idea of either of their offspring being attached to demons in any way. I certainly didn't blame them.

I winced, feeling my heart shrink with the disappointment I was going to be giving them. Al had been very clear — I needed an adult gargoyle, not a half-grown one. Sighing, I tried to come up with the easiest way to let them down. I opened my mouth to say something kind, but firm, when Crescendo's silence caught my attention. He was staring at me, red eyes narrowed, but it was a measuring stare of concentration rather than the angry glare of a concerned father. I cocked my head at him, unsure what he wanted to know. He gave himself a shake and returned to the conversation, quieting everyone with a loud, gravelly roar.

"Enough," he grated when he'd caught their attention. He sounded resigned. "Gliss, little pebble, I understand. Honestly, I do." Glissando huffed at him, skepticism in her smirk, but he raised a hand. "But you don't know this demon. How do you know she'd treat you well?" He turned on me, glaring. "You're shunned by the Coven; I can sense that. You're bound to some other demon; I can sense that, too. Would you make her live in the Ever After with you, never to see the sun?"

Shocked, I took a step back. "No! Of course not! I mean, she'd need to be trained, but—" I blinked, regrouping. "I mean, that's the problem. Guys, I can't do it. I can't bond with Gliss. It's not that I don't want to help you both, but she's too young. It's vital that I have a gargoyle who can sing me the lines. One who's already reached maturity and knows them by heart."

Both Bis and Glissando rose into the air again, protesting in unison.

I caught Crescendo's eye again, seeing his relief and appraisal. I gave him a sad smile, which seemed to buoy his spirits. "The demon's right," he said.

Bis glared at him. "Her name's _Evie,_" he insisted hotly. "She's Rachel's _friend_, not some stinking surface demon who just crawled up out of a ley line." I felt my face flush with emotion as Bis flew to me, eyes pleading. "Please. I couldn't help my bond with Rachel. It's OK, I really like her. But Gliss is my best friend. She's my life-mate. I can't… I can't leave her behind. You _have_ to bond with her so she can stay by my side. You just _have_ to!"

Tears prickled in my eyes. "Bis… you don't understand. I'm… damaged. I'm probably not going to live forever, not like Rachel. Any gargoyle that wants to bond with me… needs to understand that it's a gamble. I might not make it. Newt and Dali both think I'll probably go insane when we have to fix the Ever After."

Glissando alighted on the ground again, looking small and frightened. "But you're a demon. Demons can't die," she said.

"I can. Though they'll probably force me to join the Collective, which means you're right, I won't be able to die. But…" Here I looked to Ceri. "What happens to bonded gargoyles when their demons go insane?"

Ceri's lovely blue eyes were sad. "Traditionally they are put down," she said. "To keep the insane demons from line-jumping."

I grimaced. "So there you go. I'm reluctant to bond to a gargoyle in the first place, but Al told me to try. So I'm trying, but the decision's ultimately up to the gargoyle. I won't force anyone to share my fate. Gliss, gargoyles live a long, long time even without demons. You won't be left behind."

Bis and Glissando stood close to each other, tails intertwining in a manner that was heartbreakingly sweet. "What if she's right?" Glissando asked, her rough voice anxious.

"You know Rachel. She's so accident-prone," Bis said, voice quiet. "I know there's a chance she won't make it, either. She's not in the Collective yet. But that didn't stop me; I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Gliss, Evie's really tough. Rachel's told me about her. We should take the chance — what if we don't get another one?"

The world wavered again, as I saw the two young lovers facing the dilemma Ash and I faced, and knew that they were so hopelessly young and optimistic and in love that they'd grasp at the chance anyway, no matter what I'd say to dissuade them. And I was _still _rooting for common sense on their part, when in my own life I was rooting for love to conquer all. Who was I to make this decision for them? And yet I couldn't let myself give in — I needed to be an adult. I tried to wipe the tears away before they saw, only to find that the two adult gargoyles were watching me with avid curiosity. I'm sure my face was one big plea for help.

Glissando nodded, her eyes fixed on Bis. "I still want to do it," she said, yellow eyes beseeching.

"I can't," I said. "Please understand why I can't."

"Listen to her, Glissando," her father said. Etude whispered something to Crescendo, and Crescendo frowned thoughtfully and gave a reluctant nod, eyes narrowed and face grim. Etude's hand pressed his shoulder briefly, then fell away.

"I want to do it," Glissando said. "Dad, can't you see she's a good demon? It'll be OK."

I knew that tone. It was one breath away from the next stages of teenager parental persuasion: bargaining, followed by outrageous accusations of general uncoolness and threats of running away from home. I took a breath to deny her again, but to my surprise, Crescendo caught my eye and shook his head. Blinking in surprise, I stayed quiet. After a long, thoughtful silence, he appeared to reach a verdict in his mind. He took to the air, moving more lightly than I could have imagined a creature that size could move. "Make a circle," he said to me.

Bewildered, I glanced up at him, hovering over me. How the heck did such a massive creature manage to hover so gracefully? My hair blew about in the gusts from his wings, but I felt no sense of menace from him now. "Make a circle…? Why?"

"To bond with a demon, the gargoyle has to attune itself to the demon's aura. Once the bond's formed, only that gargoyle will ever be able to pass through that demon's circle again. Go ahead and make the circle." His voice sounded resigned, but determined. Etude was watching, expressionless, motionless, and silent as the stone he resembled.

Glissando hopped closer to me, wings fluttering with agitation. "Really?" she asked, hope blooming on her squashed stony face.

"I've seen and heard enough," her father answered.

I bit my lip, shaking my head. "Are you sure?" I asked, feeling as if this decision had just been taken completely out of my hands. But I'd pleaded my case, and I did need a gargoyle. Al was going to friggin' kill me when I came home with a kid, but I'd just have to hope like hell Bis and the others could teach his girlfriend what she needed to know to teach me. And if all went well, then the two lovebirds would have a very long, happy life together.

If all went well. Hell. I needed to stop this.

But Crescendo nodded, face grim.

So I raised an undrawn circle. I made it nice and wide, a good twenty feet across, keeping it weaker than it needed to be. It wasn't for protection, after all. The wall of scorched, translucent green rose around me. The thought that my aura still had its original color was heartening, but of course that wouldn't last. Through the shimmering wall of energy, I saw Bis land on his father's shoulder, beaming happily, and behind him Ceri and Quen watching in avid silence.

Glissando launched herself at her father, glomping his face in a hug. "Thank you thank you thank you Daddy thank you!" she gushed.

"My beautiful girl, my wonderful, brave little pup. I love you. I'm so proud of you." Crescendo gently pried her off and held his daughter before him, pride and sadness on his face. He bent and nuzzled her on the nose, closing his eyes in what looked like pain.

"Daddy?" she asked, suddenly uncertain.

"Forgive me," he grated, and flung her straight up into the air.

She wailed, and I shrieked, because Crescendo used the momentum from his toss to send himself crashing right through my circle, passing through it like it wasn't even there. I leapt aside before his stony bulk squashed me like a bug. Gasping, I raised myself onto an elbow in time to see Glissando try to follow, only to smack into the wall of energy. I winced as she rebounded tried again, and again, keening desperately. Uncertain what to do, I just sat there gaping like an idiot as the girl screamed and cried, afraid that if I took the circle down now, she'd plummet to the earth and hurt herself. Bis finally grabbed her tail and yanked to get her attention. He dodged her blind strike, and a chip of stone flaked from his flank where she nicked him. He caught her forelimbs as she struggled, dragging her back from my circle. All the time she kept crying "No, no, no!"

"Don't!" Bis pleaded. "Don't hurt yourself!"

Glissando struggled for a moment longer, and the desolate expression on her face broke my heart again. Then the two of them flew off like bat-winged bolts of lightning, Glissando's wails fading into the distance.

I felt a cold, rough hand touch my arm, and the world exploded into sound and color as awareness of all of Cincinnati's myriad ley lines burned into my mind. I yelped and flinched away in surprise, and this time I did hit the edge of my circle. There was a fizzle as it dissolved, and I looked at Crescendo with a wince. "Sorry," I said. "That's going to take some getting used to."

Crescendo was still sprawled on the ground beside me, gazing in the direction his daughter had fled. He grunted, and my heart broke at his bleak expression. His red eyes were dim, as if his fire had been banked. He smelled like sun-warmed granite, a cold, mineral scent laced with iron.

Etude approached. "She'll forgive you," he rumbled as he crouched to help his friend rise.

Crescendo didn't reply, though he did give me a look that quelled anything else I might have said. I took a shivery breath and sighed, because I could already guess how this was going to play out. I'd been the jerk who showed up and dangled an irresistible treat before his daughter, tempting her. And now he'd traded his own life to me to protect her, and he'd resent me for the rest of eternity. After watching the interactions of Treble and Cadenza with their respective demons, I sort of understood the weird dynamic of affection and resentment. Crescendo was a good father, capable of the deepest kind of love. I couldn't ask for a better character, just… I would have preferred it if our relationship had started on a better note.

Ceri glided over to us, extending a hand to help me up. I took it and rose, brushing dust and dirt from my clothing. I looked over Crescendo again, feeling oddly shy. What, exactly, _was_ this relationship we'd be cultivating? Demons might think of it as master and slave, or demon and pet, but I was thinking more of a partnership. Was that the right word? A business arrangement? This was going to be awkward for a long time, if Crescendo had no interest in forging any kind of friendship with me.

"Um," I said. "Is that it? That's all it takes? We're bound now?" I didn't feel any different.

Etude nodded, expression far off. I wondered if he were wishing he'd had the chance to spare his own son from being stuck with Rachel. "It's begun," he said, voice deep and rough.

"It will be awhile before you feel the effects, probably a month or two before the bond stabilizes, or so I've been told," Ceri said. She clapped me on the shoulder. "Congratulations, both of you. I believe you'll work well together. Crescendo, it is an honor to meet you. What you did for Glissando is for the best, and I know she'll come to understand why."

Crescendo and I stared at each other, and I nodded in agreement. His eyes dropped and he scuffed the ground with a clawed foot. I suddenly wondered if he felt as awkward as I did. Maybe he wasn't angry at me after all…? "It's all they've been talking about, for months. They were working up the courage to come to _you_," he said quietly. He sighed, a sound like tires crunching over gravel. "But Bis is gifted. Special."

"He's a lob-winged klutz," Etude muttered, though there was affection in his voice. "Makes his own trouble if he can't find enough of it."

_Sounds perfect for Rachel_, I thought, hiding a smile.

Crescendo continued as if he'd heard this a million times before. "He hears a song once, he never forgets. Perfect pitch and mind like a mousetrap. A rare talent." Etude's skin flushed black with pride as he shifted, massive wings sending another breeze my way. "My Gliss, though… she's a bright kid, gonna be a real star someday, but she's no prodigy. Gliss couldn't sing you the lines, not yet. Not for decades. You might have gotten angry, and there's only one way to break the bond between demon and gargoyle."

"Oh," I said, understanding. "Crescendo, I wouldn't have hurt her, and I won't hurt you. I promise I'll protect you. Thank you for doing what you did. I think Ceri's right — they'll understand."

He didn't look convinced, shifting from foot to foot. "So what now? What's going to happen to me?" he asked, voice still gruff.

"Um. I'm not sure. I honestly didn't expect to find someone who'd be willing to be my gargoyle," I said gently. "I'd like to invite you back to my place to meet Treble and Cadenza, though. And yes, I live in the Ever After for now. But please don't feel like you'll be trapped there. You're not my prisoner. As long as I have a way to contact you, I don't see any reason why you can't continue to live here in reality, if you want."

"No… I should come stay with you, for now. The others like Rachel OK, but… they're gonna be suspicious. Besides, the bond is there now. It might get painful to stray too far from you, at least until it's completely formed."

Oh, swell. So now Crescendo had lost his home as well as alienated his kid. Could I ruin anyone else's day next? "Don't you want to talk to Gliss…? Chase her down and explain…?"

"My pup's going to be pissed at me for awhile. She won't listen to me now. Give it a week or two."

He looked so forlorn, like he wasn't sure he even believed what he was saying. I wished I could say something to make it better — anything to give him hope.

Hope. _Of course!_

"When you see Gliss again, you can tell her there's another demon. Her name's Hope. She was raised on earth, like Rachel and I, and she's just a teenager." The gargoyle's eyes flicked back to mine as I continued, "I'm not going to lie, she's in a bad way right now. Part of why I needed a gargoyle is so I can save her life." That wasn't entirely true, but then again, he might have insights into the twisted ley line she'd left that Treble didn't. "If you and I can save her, she could be a really good match for Glissando someday."

Crescendo stared thoughtfully at me, then bared his fanged teeth in a tired, but very real, smile. "Hope." His chest rumbled with something between a chuckle and a huff. "Yes. I'll tell her." He scuffed the ground again. "Didn't expect I'd ever be bound to a demon myself," he said, still sounding lost. "I figured you'd go for Gliss. Was fully prepared to rip your legs off."

I blinked. He was serious. He might have been able to do it, too, since my world exploded into chaotic confusion whenever a gargoyle touched me. I might not even have noticed being ripped limb from limb. "What changed your mind?"

"When you said 'no.'" He shrugged. "You got kids?"

I blinked again, dumbfounded. "No," I said, a nervous huff of laughter escaping me. "Why would you ask?"

He gazed off toward the dark, indistinct tuft of trees where his daughter had fled. He shrugged again, then turned to Etude. "You'll tell 'em? About Hope?" Etude nodded, eyes dim and expression grim. "Best be off, then," he said, and Etude clapped him on the shoulder once more before launching himself into the air without another glance at me. He winged off in the direction their children had taken, the sound of his wings fading away into the cricket chirps and other sounds of the night.

So I had acquired my gargoyle. If only the rest of my life were so easy.


	42. Anatomy of an Alternate Reality

_Undead Pool coming out next month, woo! Deviating from canon a bit here. In my story it was established before "Ever After" came out that Newt never made a ley line and is not bound to the Ever After as the men are. _

In Which Evie Makes Connections

I found myself at kind of a loss as to what to do next. Take Crescendo back to Ash's place? I didn't like that option, though it'd be easy enough to bribe the jump demons to send us home from the mall — all I'd have to do is give them a box of untainted cupcakes or a cup of real coffee.

I much preferred hanging out with my elven friends and my new gargoyle in Trent's beautiful gardens, so I let myself forget that there was anything big going down anywhere in the world, like the imminent kidnapping of a baby elven princess, or the destruction of a 2000-year-old witchy institution. No, sir, the only thing that mattered right now was simple enjoyment of air that was not tainted, toxic, or just too close. And stars. And crickets chirping, and Crescendo occasionally spitting at bats. I'm not entirely sure why he was doing it, but it was entertaining nonetheless as the bats deviated from their paths to chase the drops of rainwater, then rise again in disgust. His ability to spit discrete little squirts of water was actually rather impressive, reminding me of modern fountains that made perfect water snakes arc and dance and weave before they landed precisely into little grates.

We wandered for a while, heading for a central structure that looked more like a confection than a building, large enough to house a band. The narrow paths opened onto a large paved area filled with decorative urns and artfully arranged flowers. I was tickled to note that the decorative brickwork was laid out in a complex pattern of concentric, interlocked circles — any of which could be used to trap an unwanted visitor at a moment's notice. I pointed this out and Ceri explained how they'd designed it for easy protection from many different kinds of magical assault, and how she'd personally designed the brick pattern based off of a common demon garden design.

"We even sanctified the gazebo," she said, laughing at the look I gave the ornate little building, then her.

"Why…?"

"After Al decided that he could show up anywhere Rachel went, we figured it would be a good idea to have holy ground to retreat to. Just in case. We almost lost our head gardener when we told her about the tool shed. And you should have seen the look on the priest's face when we asked him to sanctify the stables and the poolhouse, too."

The conversation turned to ley lines, and I finally weaseled out of Quen the secret regarding how Trent moved the line over the vault. Apparently it was a complex process of electromagnetic currents induced in a coil, which resonated at exactly the right frequency to harmonize properly with the lines. It had taken years of trial and error and theoretical physics on the part of Kalamack Senior—

At which point Crescendo snorted and huffed that if Quen wanted the proper harmonics, all he'd needed to do was ask a gargoyle. And did he know that the line's resonance had shifted a bit over the last fifty years, and his little magnet setup was going to fail in a few more? In Crescendo's point of view, anybody who couldn't actually sing along with the lines couldn't possibly understand them — and clearly Quen felt the same about anyone without a background in particle physics. Their good-natured bickering was like watching a plumber and an engineer arguing over a broken washing machine.

"Could a demon move a ley line with a curse?" I interrupted eventually. I'd refrained from flashing my own credentials, on the off chance that Quen didn't know I had a doctorate in the subject myself. It was old habit, I admit — but then I was of the generation where everything about your particular witchy talents had to be kept hidden. Even when I'd been teaching at a major university, I still hadn't been much for discussing my magic with anyone outside of my academic colleagues. Having heard the lines a few times through Crescendo now, though, I was motivated and eager to hear what else he could tell me about them.

The two self-proclaimed ley-line experts glanced at each other, then shrugged. "You'd have to change the resonance," Quen suggested. "Mess up the harmonics," Crescendo said, simultaneously.

I blinked. Hadn't I done that? "I think I did that, once. A couple of weeks ago?"

"That was _you_?" Crescendo looked scandalized. "There's a whole colony in South America that wants your head over that," he said, ugly face splitting into an incredulous grin.

_South America?_ "News travels fast, I see," I said. "So I know the consequences of my screw-up on the Ever After side… what happened in reality?"

"Whole slew of lines started migrating… goyles never seen anything like it. Sure screwed up their songs until the frequencies readjusted." Crescendo eyed me suspiciously. "And _why_ did you do it?"

"I got mad," I said simply. I held up my shackled wrists. "It was an accident. They're making sure I can't do it again. It's… a long story. I'll tell you about it later."

_So much for forgetting about my troubles_. And now Crescendo was hunching down, a motion I couldn't help but feel was self-protective and perhaps depressed at being stuck with me, and it made me depressed as well. My thoughts wandered to Hope. Two demon women, untrained, having accidents that changed entire aspects of reality. No — three. Rachel had created her own ley line, too. But neither Hope nor Rachel had been murderously angry at the time, had they? What had Hope been doing? I'd merely altered ley line frequencies, but Hope had created some sort of ley line singularity. It had to do with ley lines, and reality, and the Ever After…

"Ceri. Do you know how a demon _creates_ a ley line? What did Rachel do?"

"She created hers the same way all the demons did — she rode the lines and couldn't find her way out, so she tore her way free. Not all demons can do it. There's no training for it. When the Ever After was created, the males had to fling themselves into the lines to escape the coming collapse, and only those who could find someone in reality to cleave to ever made it out. They drove…" she searched for a word, "…furrows into the fabric between reality, scars that cannot heal."

"Just the men…?" I asked.

"Of course," she replied. "Ash hasn't explained this to you? The women were in reality. It was their shared tulpa of the Earth that the men pulled free of their minds, trapping the elves and themselves in the process."

I stared at her with what was undoubtedly my least intelligent expression, gobsmacked. "The Ever After… the entire damned Earth-sized alternate reality Ever After… is one gigantic _tulpa_?" _Holy hell, how many demons had it taken to create the place?_

Ceri nodded. "There were many thousands of minds, all linked together in twelve different locations. They wove their traps so skillfully that the elves never even noticed the critical moment when their reality, their _now_, was knocked free of the stream. A trapped moment of time, wrapped in the women's memory, then pulled free by the men. Then the men hurled themselves into the last of the ley lines. But the lines they'd used for the workings had all closed to them, drained by the magnitude of the working. So the demons had to tear new ways out."

I could listen to Ceri's captivating voice spinning the ancient tale for hours, but right now my mind was beginning to whirl again with the possibilities. "The tulpa actually affected reality," I said.

"Yes. The women cocooned the elves in a memory, and pulled them out of time."

"But time flows in the Ever After," I said. I saw that Crescendo was listening in, ears pricked though his stone expression was still, well, stony.

"Because of the ley lines that anchor it. Through them, time and energy fluctuate in an eternal ebb and flow that follows the rising and setting of the sun. The Ever After lags reality like a ghostly kite, anchored to reality by the lines."

"…and the men are yanked back to the Ever After at dawn, because they made the lines, and that's how the energy flows. It reverses at sunrise, drawing them back?" Ceri nodded, and something else she'd said penetrated my thick skull. _Twelve_ locations. "And the nexus that the Coven protects…? The twelve locations that are the same somehow?"

Ceri smiled at my understanding. "Yes, those were the locations of the twelve elven meetings, where the demon women wove their traps. They are where the two realities overlap most closely, and the time distortion is the least. The geography of the Ever After is difficult to describe — curved and shifted and distorted because only those twelve points were actually created by the women. The demons never predicted that they would become connected, or that their artificial reality would expand instead of contracting and fading away, but it did. It was centuries before the two realities stabilized. The nexus is…" She had to pause and search for words again, "It's sort of an artifact of the old demon collective. It's a middle ground between the two realities, where the scars of all the old ley lines overlap. Here," she said, and began sketching in the dirt. What she drew made little sense at first, sort of an hourglass shape, with a circle in the constricted stem where the lines crossed. "Except these lines are in time, not space," she said. "So they look like they are far apart, but… they lead to the same point in space, in a place where time as we perceive it is frozen."

"But aren't the old lines dead…?"

"Mostly. Not all. And many of the new lines cross through the nexus as well."

I just gaped at her, my mind having been lost somewhere back in the middle of that explanation. I couldn't pretend I understood everything she'd said. But shreds of understanding were floating around, just waiting to come together. One thing was perfectly clear, though. "I guess I see why they don't want _me_ near it," I said, voice dry.

Ceri laughed. "Until they decide it's time to fix things — then, naturally, you'll be the ones they pester to do it. You and Rachel."

"It kind of sounds like they don't have much more of a clue about how all this works than I do," I said, thinking of the earlier discussion, and about how even though I was supposed to help everyone "fix" the Ever After, nobody seemed to be sure what, exactly, that entailed. But if Ceri was right… "How the hell are two women supposed to replicate what it took_ thousands_ to do?!"

Ceri shrugged. "A pebble dropped into a stream at the right place can potentially turn the course of the river," she said. "Perhaps that's all that is needed, just a nudge in the right direction."

"Yeah," Crescendo said, glancing at the diagram with a sour expression. "That's totally not how we perceive things at all," he said, scowling at the lines. "But the part about this whole get-up being stable is right. Screw up a resonance here, and the whole business might come apart like a soggy snowball."

"The demons think it's the sheer size of the tulpa that held it together, along with all the new ley lines. Rachel's line threw it out of balance, but only a little. Hope's line must be a serious problem."

Crescendo grunted, and drew an addition to the diagram with a clawed hand: a sun to the right of the diagram and a distorted line bending out from one side, nearly looping itself trying to reach the sun. "You got it sucking on nearby lines," he explained. "If I understand this whole linear metaphor correctly," he added, ears flushing black. "You gotta understand, they ain't _lines_ at all, not the way we hear 'em. But you visual types…" He flushed blacker, and I wondered what he'd been about to say. "Anyway… so if this thing sucks one in…" He erased his work and connected the sun to the distorted line. "…then you get the flow going into this black hole of death here, and…" he gently smoothed out the original line's counterpart flowing to the Ever After. "No more juice over here. The black hole gets bigger, sucks more lines in. It grows, slow at first then exponentially bigger."

"No more Ever After," I said. "And what about the demons who made those lines?"

Ceri shrugged. "If they don't die when their line vanishes into the singularity, they certainly will perish when the Ever After collapses."

"Is that right? If their line goes over here," I pointed to the little sun, "won't they just be flung into the singularity when the sun rises?" I shuddered. "OK, that wouldn't be much better, would it?"

Ceri shrugged again, not looking at all unhappy about the prospect. Not that I blamed the former demon slave. "Perhaps better than perishing slowly, crushed to death in a shrinking reality."

I grimaced, thinking of Ash. _Not on my watch._ I had to figure out what the hell happened with Hope. I stared at the scratchings as Crescendo asked Ceri something, letting my gaze unfocus. So what _was_ the singularity?

"What were you doing, Hope…?" I whispered. Now that I finally had time to think, I let my mind wander, putting together the pieces I'd learned so far. "She's just learned that her birth mother's alive," I murmured, and I heard Ceri and Crescendo's voices fall silent. "…that she was stolen. She's probably not ready to believe that yet. She goes to confront her parents, and she knows they're in a meeting with her boss, so she barges into the meeting…"

When I'd met Ellasbeth, I'd assumed the worst — that elves were ice-cold, that Hope's parents and her boss were in on everything, raising her to be a sacrifice. But then I'd met Jessalyn. Hope's adopted parents loved her. Jessalyn loved her. And they'd taught Hope the cure for Rosewood — she could probably replicate it, given the right equipment. Why? Why would they have given it to her if they knew she was going to Zee? Maybe they were hoping that Zee would let Hope keep her mind and soul, if she knew the cure?

"So maybe they've all gathered because Ellasbeth's about to have her baby. Or maybe it's because Delores is threatening to inform the Coven. Maybe Hope's parents didn't even know about any of all this, and they're threatening to fight to keep Hope. Maybe they want to talk to Zee, to get an extension or break the deal, except Brooke's been kidnapped. Maybe Hope even finds out she's scheduled to be turned over to Zee when the baby's born. Everything's falling apart, there's definitely accusations and yelling, and Hope is suddenly hit by a wave of nostalgia—"

"Nostalgia?" Ceri interrupted.

"Yeah… that's what Newt said it felt like, to her. I was asleep at the time." I closed my eyes, not wanting to lose this thread. "Hope's in denial. She's wishing…" I put myself in her shoes, recalling the despair and frustration I'd experienced earlier that day. "She's wishing with all her heart that she'd never met Delores. She's wishing the whole day had never happened. She's wishing she could just cut that day out of her memory, and have everything go back to the way it was…" I could easily imagine it. Desperate to forget. Desperate for everything to be _normal_ again.

And she'd done it. Hope couldn't remember that day. Whatever magic she'd performed, she had cut out that portion of her memory — everything following the moment when poor, doomed Delores had barged into her life.

And in the process, Hope had created a ley line… not a normal line, but a singularity, a line to nowhere, a strange thing twisted upon itself. _Why_? "She taps the lines, maybe unconsciously. She goes deep into herself… she _goes_ there, to her perfect memory, back to the happy time before she knew about her birth mother and—"

_Memories._ A demon woman's memories _can affect reality_.

"A tulpa? Hope made a tulpa…?" I tried on the idea. "But that can't be right. She doesn't have the ability. She couldn't make one yesterday…"

"Evie…?" Ceri prompted when I feel silent, thinking of yesterday, when Hope had tried so hard and failed to capture even a simple memory for Newt.

Newt… who had worked so hard to put the girl back together, after her soul had been lost in the lines. But not all of her. Part of her was still missing. My eyes flew open. "She couldn't do it yesterday because she's _still making one_. Nobody pulled it out. It's _still in her head."_


	43. Evie and the Dread Gazebo

_Chapter title inspired by The Tale of Eric and the Dread Gazebo. A classic. _

**In Which Rachel Does It Again**

The three of them blinked at me, not getting it. I stood up, shaking, convinced I was on the right track. "You said the women made the Ever After, and the elves in reality were sucked into its making. _Hope_ removed a sphere of reality, with everyone inside it, and nobody knows where it went. It's not in reality anymore. But it's also not in the Ever After, or the demons would've found it. She made a _tulpa_ of her life, of that day, maybe of that room, of the moment before everything started falling apart. But without a male to pull it from her mind…" I grimaced. "Even Dali said he's not sure what would happen. Dali says she's dying because her soul's being siphoned off into the thing. Because part of her is _still in there_. That's why Newt couldn't find it! It wasn't_ in_ the lines! It wasn't _anywhere_!" I blinked rapidly, feeling tears. "If I'm right, then maybe she can still be saved! Maybe she can even be _whole_ again!" I stopped pacing. "We just need someone to pull it out of her. Maybe we could make it real again. Bring it back. Bring them all back. Bring her family some closure."

Quen shifted, his tone the voice of the devil's advocate. "Even if you're correct, you have no evidence that it's still there, still intact."

"No… but…" I chewed my lip, making a vague _wait for it_ gesture with my hand as I recalled my visit to UCLA. "Al took me to see the damage at the lab, in reality and in the Ever After. There's nothing missing in the Ever After version of the building. Might that not mean that it still exists in reality… somewhere?"

"Not there_ now_. Shoved out of time," Crescendo said. "But maybe still there, in the past? Not some_where_, but some_when_."

"And in all the time that's gone by since then in reality, it's just…missing. So the rest of the building collapsed around it."

Ceri's sharp intake of breath caught my attention. "Evie, if you're right, then the elves trapped within may not be dead!"

My heart gave a leap of hope. But it flopped back down again when I thought of all the time that had passed since then. _Shit. _"I don't know, Ceri… the affected area was only about seventy feet in diameter, if I remember right. That amount of air wouldn't support so many people, not for weeks… let alone their not having any clean water or food." I grimaced, trying to block my imagination from taking over. _Those poor people._ "If only I'd figured this out sooner…"

"No, the making's not complete. It's a drop of time, pulled free of its course," Ceri said, eyes wide. "Those trapped within would be frozen in time."

"The further away we pull from that moment, the wider the rift becomes," Crescendo added, sounding both intrigued and alarmed.

"…and the more energy the thing needs to maintain itself, sucking it from the nearby ley lines. And the more of Hope gets pulled into it…?" I felt my pulse pounding, feeling both triumphant and horrified by the idea of it all. "A _tulpa_. That's got to be what she was doing. Untrained. Screwing it up… like me and my spindling." _ God, no wonder they're so eager for us all to be properly trained, if we can mess up reality this badly!_ "I've got to tell Newt!"

"You're_ not_ summoning her here," Ceri interrupted.

"Who's Newt?" Crescendo asked. He tilted his head, as if remembering something, then turned to stare into the middle distance, brow furrowing. "You hear that?" he asked. "The lines—" He gave a gasp, then slapped hands over his ears with a grimace, hunching in on himself. I felt it, too. Not a drop in power as happened when someone tapped the lines, but a surge, rippling out over the garden from at least two directions.

"Are you all right?" Hurrying to Crescendo's side, I unthinkingly laid a hand on him. Immediately I regretted it — the lines were too bright, their colors wrong, their flavor metallic and sharp and pulsing with odd sparkles. And not prettily, either — more like seizure-inducing. Instantly the inklings of a headache twitched dully behind my eyes, threatening to grow worse.

"Ringing!" Crescendo gasped, panting. "So loud… what the fuck is _that_?"

I still had a hand on his arm, so I saw everything in amazing, exquisite detail.

She came from nowhere. I felt her drawing nearer, from a direction I couldn't comprehend, as if it were from inside the earth itself. The fabric of reality stretched, bulged, then she tore her way through. She didn't travel in a line, and yet a line was what she left behind, particles of space and time glowing and screaming around her in an explosion of sound — and yet it wasn't sound at all. She left much of her golden aura behind, and it scented the rift she'd torn with cool wind over churning water, laced with steel. The screaming of reality faded, and far more human screaming shattered the night.

I whipped my hand away from Crescendo to see Rachel on the ground, sobbing and curled protectively over a newborn child. It wasn't Rachel doing the screaming; the baby was loud enough for both of them.

"Rachel!" Ceri's shocked voice broke the moment of collective stunned immobility. The elf knelt beside Rachel, coaxing her to unwind. She gazed in horrified wonder at the infant in Rachel's arms.

The baby was tiny, eyes squeezed shut, mouth open wide, face red and fists flailing. She had the itty-bittiest, cutest little pointy elf ears ever. The volume of her squalling was astonishingly out of proportion to her size. My heart nearly seized with empathy — nobody wants to hear a baby in pain.

"Ceri, help her," Rachel begged, thrusting the newborn at Ceri, tears steaming down her face. Her hands were shaking. "Is she OK? Oh my God, did I hurt her? It was all I could do—" Her voice was choked off by another sob.

"She's fine," Ceri's voice was soft and reassuring, after she'd taken a moment to examine the baby physically and with her second sight. "Her aura's fine. She's OK, Rachel, she's just upset," she added, as Rachel shuddered. "You both made it intact."

"I have to go back!" Rachel said, making it to her knees before wobbling and falling back on her ass.

"Rachel, you just made _another_ ley line," I said, unable to keep the concern out of my voice. Crescendo was still hunched, eyes squeezed shut even as his head was canted as if listening to the new line Rachel had ripped into reality. Or maybe he was reacting to the insane amount of noise that baby was making, though the cries were wavering as Ceri held the infant against her chest, bouncing and cooing in the way that mothers do. "If you jump back now you might make another one!"

Rachel turned her luminous green eyes to us. "I left them all there — Jenks, Ivy, Trent! I left them fighting a _demon_!" But she was staring at her line in horror, hair floating in the wind of the Ever After as she used her second sight. I wondered if I looked that otherworldly whenever I tapped into my demonic heritage. "Evie, can you ask Ash to jump me? I have to get back there! I left them!"

I grimaced at her frantic words, even as the baby stopped howling. Ceri had bared a breast and was coaxing the baby to nurse. Quen wrapped his jacket around his wife and the baby for modesty, and I paused to wonder how Ceri, whose kid was nearing five, still had milk. Maybe it was an elf thing. "He's off storming the Coven." I tapped my forehead. "Out of radio contact, even for me." I'd tried contacting him a few times since he'd physically entered the Coven HQ, but either he'd blocked me completely or the Coven shields were just _that _good. Since he'd warned me it might happen, I wasn't too worried. Yet.

"Crap on toast, how do I get back?" She bit her lip, eyes on her ley line, and her expression turned haunted. "I'm going to have to ask Al, aren't I? Shit. He won't listen to me."

"I think he would, but he's off with Ash."

"Shit!" Rachel made it to her feet, waving away my offered hand. "Maybe I should talk to Newt…?"

"No," Ceri said quickly.

I was about to disagree with Ceri, but looking at the beautiful elf with the contented baby hidden under the jacket, I felt a sudden pang of dread. "This is Trent and Ellasbeth's baby — the one Zee wants. Was it Zee attacking you?" Rachel nodded, pushing her hair back with shaking hands. "We can't bring Newt here. She might just take the baby and hand it over to Zee herself, to save herself the hassle of going to court," I said. I rather liked the batty demon woman, pain in the ass that she was, but I had no illusions that she'd think twice about the life of an elven child.

"I have to get back." Rachel sat down, hard, arms wrapped tight around herself to hide the trembling. "I _left _them there. Trent told me to take the baby and run. He _begged_ me—" She swallowed. The words tumbled out in a rush. "Zee showed up just as we'd made it back to the hotel, and demanded we hand her over, and he wouldn't listen, and said elven traditions be damned, it wouldn't hold up in court—"

"Wait, he attacked you_ after_ you'd left Ellasbeth?" Rachel nodded. "How did Zee know she'd been born? How did he find you?"

"He can track her," Ceri whispered. All of us turned our gaze to her, her face pale as she looked down at the bundle in her arms. "He can track her _here_."

Rachel went white. "Oh my God. Ceri, we need to get to holy ground, now!"

"Gazebo," Ceri said, pointing to the building only a short distance away. She took off toward it. Quen was immediately at her side, Rachel on his heels. Apparently Rachel knew about the sanctification of the garden.

I wasted no time following, grabbing Crescendo by the hand and giving him a tug. Discordance and shrieking harmonics exploded in my mind again, and I staggered, then recovered. The dazed gargoyle made it two wobbly steps, then spread his wings and hissed as there was a distinct drop in the new line Rachel had torn. The air shifted and popped, and Zee was standing not twelve yards away, black eyes radiating malevolence as he clutched his twisted ebony staff.

"Evie, run!" Rachel had turned, arms up defensively, looking wildly around. Quen was behind his wife, ensuring that she would reach the safety of holy ground. The baby's wails were harsh and loud in the suddenly too-silent garden.

I wasn't about to leave Crescendo to Zee's wrath. We were too close to the promise of safety. I reached into my mostly-untested arsenal, selected a random curse Ash had used on Ku'Sox, and flung it behind me as I tugged my gargoyle toward the ornate structure. Seeing my problem, Rachel joined me, taking Crescendo's other arm with one hand, flinging a curse of her own at Zee.

"Give me that child!" Zee roared, face livid. "She's mine, by right and by contract!" He growled with frustration as Quen, having seen his wife to the safety of holy ground, darted back out and triggered one of the circles on the pavement. A bubble, tinted dark green, rose up to entrap the demon.

It was just enough time to finish covering the last few feet to the gazebo. Between the two of us, we'd managed to get Crescendo into a slow but steady run. He was ungainly, but surprisingly light for his size. "Steps!" I called, because his eyes were closed.

A searing pain shocked through my body. My fingers were torn from Crescendo's arm as he tripped and stumbled forward up the steps — because I'd rebounded off nothing and was flung backwards, so violently that I skidded back a good three feet on my ass before cracking my head against a bench. Nausea bubbled up my throat and I swallowed, head ringing. From the safety of the gazebo, Ceri, Rachel, and Crescendo stared at me in surprise. I sat up, a dreadful sensation arising in me as I stared back at them. Now I could feel the resistance in the air, the… I couldn't call it malevolence, exactly, because it wasn't sentient. It was, however, recognition and rejection. I, personally, was Not Allowed Here. As in, unworthy. Tainted.

_Cast out._

I tried to shake off the nausea and pain, but stars were still whirling and birds were still cheeping, and my heart was quailing at this latest development. When had I joined the ranks of the damned, when Rachel was still admitted to sanctified spaces? It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fucking fair! I'd managed to suppress that hated phrase for most of my time in the Ever After, but it bubbled up in me now. I had never believed in gods of any flavor… before my wild elven magic encounter with the spooky, otherworldly, super-powerful being. And I knew in my heart that holy ground was a charm, not a divine gift. It didn't help. Staring at the patch of sanctity that I was now denied, I found myself feeling utterly… forsaken. Shunned by everyone earthly, and now abandoned by the almighty. _No, Goddamn it, this is not fair! I'm not evil! I'm not vicious or cruel! I've only ever tried to help!_

Zee interrupted my incipient despair with an angry roar. Quen's circle sparked as Zee's staff thrust into the thin sheet of Ever After — then shattered, which surprised the hell out of us. Perhaps there were pipes or wires buried beneath the path, or perhaps Zee was just that much of a badass. Either way, Rachel and Quen were looking like they were about to do something stupid/heroic to save me, when it was the little princess who needed protection. Demons themselves might not be able to enter holy ground, but there was nothing stopping Zee from flattening the structure with a curse if he felt like it. Or just lighting it on fire, forcing them to leave it.

"Protect the kid!" I shouted at them. "Circle it! Join up and circle it!"

To Rachel's credit, she hesitated, face stricken. But having committed herself to the child's welfare by abandoning her friends and creating a new freaking ley line in the process, she could hardly drop everything to save me. She joined hands with Quen and Ceri and the three of them bubbled the gazebo in a much more serious-looking circle that fairly crackled with energy. To my relief, Crescendo was inside it, still looking queasy from the discord and confusion.

Which just left me, sitting on my ass with a profound headache, facing off against one very, very pissed-off demon who, from the look of it, was no longer playing by the rules.


	44. Journey's End

**In Which It All Goes Wrong**

I scrambled to pop up my own protective bubble, though I doubted it'd be any more effective than Quen's had been. I wasn't disparaging the elven garden defenses. Drawn circles would be tough enough against most foes; it was only the demons that could burst through a circle weakened by an open connection, and patches of holy ground would take care of that angle.

Unless, of course, holy ground booted_ you_ out, too. Lucky me.

But Zee was a demon, and he was armed with a staff just like Newt's. I huddled in my circle and tried not to look either as cowardly or as dazed as I felt. Rachel, Ceri, and Quen, on the other hand, had joined their powers with their joined hands, and had empowered a circle that I didn't think Newt herself could crack even with her nifty black stick.

"Give me the child, Rachel Mariana Morgan," Zee growled, striking the ground with his staff in frustration. "I shall not allow you and these elven _v__ermin_ to lay waste to centuries of planning!"

_Clearly you haven't been paying attention_, I thought, recalling the myriad evil plans Rachel had been fouling up on a regular basis ever since she'd crashed into the demon-summoning business. _And you're not saying your right words, either._

That fucking gazebo had really rung my bell, just now, because I'd spoken that last bit aloud. I blanched and tried not to wince as Zee jolted and whipped his head around in that inhumanly fast, creepy way only the undead and the demonic could manage. Even though I could probably do it myself now, it still made my heart lurch. His eyes, blank and black as Newt's, narrowed as he recognized me. "Kavi's whore, collaborating with Gally's pet project. How fortunate I have you both here. Pray, what _are_ the right words?"

_Hell with it_, I thought. "Through dangers untold, and hardships unnumbered," I intoned, and Rachel made a snork, one hand over her mouth. Zee just stared at me with the humorless face of the pop-culturally deficient and didn't stop me as I continued, "I have fought my way here, to take back the child you have stolen."

"Fought my way here to the castle beyond the goblin city," Rachel corrected.

"Right. What she said," I rubbed my aching head. And here I'd thought that I'd had the silly movie memorized, thanks to the teenybopper next door who'd watched it at top volume approximately seven thousand times over the span of a summer. Someday I'd have to actually _see_ it.

Zee's black gaze flicked to Rachel, then back to me. Or rather, his head twitched in those directions. His all-black eyes were as creepy as Newt's and his gaze just as hard to follow. "Don't think that Kavi can protect you from me."

"'You have no power over us,' Zee," I said, beaming with what was probably a slightly deranged grin. I'd had it with being afraid of demons. "The legal system's not only on our side, it's actively courting me." Rachel gave me a startled look, mouthing _Dali? _at me. She grimaced eloquently at my nod and shrug.

Zee's body quivered a little oddly, and the pause was a few seconds too long. He blinked a few times before he appeared to remember he was mid-threat. "You two believe you hold a special place in our society, two little fertile brats born of elven tinkering?" His smile was grim and empty of anything other than teeth. "I could kill you both and in a year's time, nobody will even remember your names. Hand over the child and I will let you live."

"Let me guess. You really think that the elves are going to trade their new princess for the cure for your impotence?" Rachel demanded, striking a saucy, hip-cocked pose. "Assuming you make it past us, you'll still have to cut through the swath of red tape Al and Newt are going to unleash on you. Or didn't you know that Newt's on our side, too?"

Again the pause. Again the blinking, the jerky twitches of the fingers. I recalled why Zee had always creeped me out. His tics were very distracting, for one thing, and invoking Newt's name didn't faze him in the slightest, if he'd even heard it. "_Cure_." There was nothing but contempt in Zee's voice. "Once I have that baby, we will have no need of a _cure_, child." It was difficult to tell where his gaze was fixed, but I had the impression that he was checking out Ceri. A raised eyebrow was the only sign of his thoughts. "Or perhaps…" he trailed off into mutters, and the eyebrows twitched down again.

Again I glanced at Rachel, wondering how we were going to get out of this. We were at a standoff, certainly — Zee couldn't break a triple-held circle. He could probably break mine and take me hostage, but I knew that Rachel wouldn't trade the life of the baby for mine. And what was his plan, anyway? "An elven kid's not going to help you escape the Ever After, bud," I said, hoping to goad him into a villainous monologue in which he'd reveal his Plan All Along. "And your plan about escaping in the bodies of cured witches is just stupid. Your souls are still tied to the Ever After, no matter where you put them."

Zee's lip curled as he regarded me. He frowned at something, waving a dismissive hand, muttering a curse. "Not as long as it still exists," he said, voice absent.

I exchanged a glance with Rachel. Yeah, she'd heard it too, the hint of Zee's underlying purpose. "You want to destroy the Ever After?" Rachel asked. "How does that help anything?"

Zee paused, cocking his head as if listening. There was definitely something off about his actions, as if he were distracted by voices only he could hear. His face fixed on Ceri again. "It could work," he said, voice thoughtful. He started, returning his gaze to Rachel as if her question had finally registered, his lips twitched into a grimace of impatience. "Stupid little whelps," he growled, gaze focusing back on Rachel. "I need that baby, woman!"

"Why?" Rachel asked, honestly curious.

Zee slammed his staff again, and sparks flew from the chipped stones. His gaze went distant for a moment, lips twitching again with subvocal mutterings, one hand idly tracing something in the air. As I stared at him, I got the distinct impression that Zee was carrying on at least two conversations. Maybe he was mad. But maybe… "Are you high or something?" I asked, but I didn't think he was.

Zee froze, eyes narrowing. His hands shook a little on his staff, though I didn't think it was from unsteadiness. More like impatience or anger. "Ceridwen Merriam Dulciate," he intoned, glaring at Ceri. "You know me. You cannot protect that infant forever. Drop your circle, else I shall visit such destruction on you and yours that—"

"Don't bother, _Erazaebosamar,_" Ceri said, cutting short his threat with a haughty toss of her wispy-blonde tresses. "You cannot harm me, and you're not getting this child."

Zee fairly danced with furious, thwarted impatience. He was silent for a time, lips moving, hands twitching. I was almost a hundred percent certain now that his mind was literally two places at once. Curiosity and annoyance overcame caution. "This conversation would be a lot easier if you'd hang up the phone," I said.

Thus far Zee's attention had mostly been on Ceri, Rachel, and the now-sleeping infant under Quen's jacket. So I was completely unprepared when he whirled and stabbed my circle with his staff .


	45. A Death in the Family

**Meanwhile, Somewhere In Spain**

Nothing was going according to plan today. They'd managed to gently scrape off several centuries of safeguards without setting off any alarms or traps, but it was taking far too long. Obviously Dali had underestimated the determination of the generations of witches, working under the delusional guidance of the elves they'd unwittingly served.

The delay was taking its toll on the three Coven witches they'd brought with them. Adrian, especially, was losing his nerve. The gangly, red-haired witch, jumpy at the best of times, was as distractible and buzzy as an angry beehive. Pierce prowled restlessly, just out of Al's cuffing range. Ash was certain he'd only agreed to this because he planned to double-cross them at a crucial moment, despite his promise to Evie. Brooke stood rigidly still and silent, with the focused air of panther in a tree and a small, malicious smile playing over her lips. Was it because she relished the idea of bringing down the Coven that had betrayed her? Ash doubted it. More likely it was knowledge of secret safeguards that she hoped Dali would trip, or some other nasty little detail nobody knew about yet…

Ash's professional paranoia was tingling, keeping his feet and hands restless and making it hard to focus on maintaining the mind shield. They had to keep themselves hidden, and this particular curse cut him off from the rest of the Collective, and even from Evie. He couldn't sense her, couldn't hear even a trickle of her thoughts. Al had sent her to his elf, Ceri, and Ash's own freed familiar, Solange. Ash may not have trusted any elf as far as he could throw one, but he knew Solange would never let harm come to Evie, at least from the elves. She'd be safe enough. So why was he unable to sit still? What had he missed?

The stone chamber they stood in was a mere antechamber, still several floors away from the entrance to the actual nexus. Unlike the lavishly decorated, lushly furnished Coven headquarters above, this room had been masquerading as a wine cellar. But Ash could sense the nexus beyond and beneath the more recent cinderblocks of the walls, still coated with the wild magic shell that kept demons out. And under that, another layer, hastily cobbled together as the last stand of the defeated demon defenders, the potent curse that barred entry to elven kind. Only witches and humans could pass both barriers freely.

"There," Dali said, with a grim smile of satisfaction.

The entrance to this room had been hidden by layers of earth magic, which Dali had finally finished sawing through while Ash hid their presence and Al kept an eye on their "allies." Dali stepped back from the open archway now visible in the cinderblock wall. An electric light swung from a short cord above the featureless steps that curved down to the right. The bare bulb swayed gently in unseen currents, though the air was perfectly still and not a little musty. Ash could sense the spatial distortion from here. He'd never visited the nexus, but knew from legends that it was a mind-bending experience, even for demons bound to gargoyles who could help them parse the odd sensations. Witches would only experience a faint nausea, a sense of seasickness that would fade with time. If the Coven witches were going to betray them, their best opportunity would be while the demons were disoriented.

There was a brief juggle for position, as the demons debated who'd be first and last through the doorway. Eyes rolling, Ash took Adrian by the arm and manhandled him to the front, reasoning that he of all their witches was the least likely to dart off and trip a trap. Ash followed, heart pounding and thrilling to the sense of danger and relief to _finally_ be moving again. Adrenaline sang through his veins, anticipation forcing out some of the nagging disquiet eating at his head.

Once the descent down the narrow stairway was complete, the party found themselves in yet another antechamber, this one bigger and more ancient-looking, with pillars of stone painted in chipped and faded colors. The floor was laid with meticulously maintained hexagonal tiles of blue and white. Ancient torchlight still burned here, the one demonic perpetual curse the witches had left intact even though it left the chamber with the faintest hint of burnt amber under the masking scents of incense and burning wood. All that was left of the original demon architecture was the simple eight-point symmetry of the room and the unnaturally smooth seams of the stones that made up the walls. The six-pointed star the witches had inlaid into the floor for all their sacred Coven-workings struck Ash as obscene, a witchy slap to the face. Six points, for the six witches and the six senses… hiding the defect of the witches, the two missing senses that the elves had stolen from them.

And there, through another deceptively open doorway, lay the nexus.

"_Bind me and strike me down_," Al murmured in an ancient dialect, eyes wide.

"Aye, we'd all love to try that," Pierce muttered, voice surly, then ducked easily as Al swiped at him without looking.

Dali grunted and shoved his witch ahead of him, grimacing as the currents of time and space and magic sucked at his perception of reality. Ash followed, trying to keep his own disorientation from his face. His sensation of each step was doubled, tripled, happening and already happened and not-yet happened, and he wondered if he was leaving a trail of images of himself behind him in a blur of motion, each a frozen moment of time. His stomach churned, but he remained focused on the doorway before them, and the three witches who floated disjointedly through the shimmering air ahead. They skirted the circle, taking up their positions at the six points, preparing to undo the shunning magic and the Coven along with it.

And it was working beautifully. Though it had taken them nearly two hours to gain access to this place, it was but the work of a moment to untangle the web of vile, corrupt magic that the Coven had used to keep its witches in line. Witches the world over sensed their social exile dissolving like smoke, and even the three Coven witches heaved a sigh of relief.

Their relief was short-lived, however, as the demons froze them in place, continuing the connection for the purpose of diving deeper, to destroy the bonds of the Coven from within—

Abruptly all three demons faltered, minds reeling. The fall to his knees lasted an age, though the jarring strike of the stones registered even before he realized he was going down. He recognized _this_ sensation, and it had nothing to do with the nexus. _This _stomach-churning, heart-rending pull at his soul was of the Collective, which had sought them all out even hidden here. Punching right through Ash's shield, the powerful Collective curse did exactly what they'd intended it to do, and all three demons groaned at the inexorable, icy tendrils siphoning a small piece of each of their collective life energy. And, predictably, everything went to hell.

Freed from their paralysis, Pierce and Brooke attacked their masters with a barrage of black spells. The circle was broken as Dali and Al defended themselves with instinct honed over several thousand years. Ash's mind expanded the instant his shield had fallen. Had Ash believed in any deities, he'd have been praying as his mind flew across the mental distance, reaching out to Evie. Having few curses to his name at the moment, he managed not to be hit by the witchy barrage by the simple expediency of having fallen prone on the tiles, staring sightlessly at the light show around him. Disoriented and blind as they were, Dali and Al didn't notice their fallen comrade, not that they would have done anything about him if they had.

Adrian, meanwhile, flung himself aside, raising amulets. After a moment's hesitation, he joined the other witches in their attack, narrowly missing having his head blown clear off his shoulders by Dali's angry curse. He dropped and rolled, landing near Ash. In reaction, the witch raised an earth amulet that was dyed red, an angry black glyph burnt into the redwood, hesitating as their eyes met. The witch's eyes were white all around, and Ash saw the endless moment of tormented indecision in his familiar's eyes as his basic honest nature warred with his loyalty to his kind and his Coven religion.

Perhaps he saw similar indecision in Ash's eyes, before Adrian's face twisted and he raised his amulet again, pressing his bloody finger to the wooden disk and mouthing the word that would invoke it. Had Ash been himself, he would have chuckled at the inevitability. People were so predictable, and he'd been right about the witch. Pushed too far, Adrian had finally broken.

But Ash's mind was only registering all this on a superficial level. The majority of his mind was elsewhere, wrapping around the confused little spot of suffering that was Evie's soul. He had no comfort to offer, only a choice that one of them would forever regret. He raised no defense against the witch, having nothing non-lethal to offer under the circumstances. Ultimately, it didn't matter if Ash died, after all. He'd be back. Adrian wouldn't.

And at this precise moment, it was vital that Adrian stay alive. Which, given the circumstances, was a questionable prospect.

Adrian did falter at the mirthless smile on Ash's face. Then his brow creased in bafflement as Ash's magic encircled him, protecting him from the black ley line spells and demon curses still flying about. For a moment, it was just the two of them, witch and demon, in a small bubble of blackness. Then the witch fell once again to his knees, the deadly little disc falling from suddenly nerveless fingers. His face went bloodless as realization of the _wrongness_ hit him, though he still had no idea what was about to happen.

Ash watched dispassionately, his own indecision warring within him. He had to stop this. He couldn't bear to stop this. He called to his mind the words to invoke the curse he and Adrian had prepared together, only a day ago, and hesitated for an endless, agonizing moment. But he could no more mouth the Latin than he could have physically carved out his own heart—which, metaphorically at least, was what the curse would do.

Then Oliver was there, robes whipping in the currents and his righteous wrath, emerging from the nexus itself. Raising a carved wand of redwood, the Coven leader triggered the room's preset defenses, small but effective little spells that Dali, in his arrogance, had either overlooked or thought unimportant. A whirlwind of energy and light whipped about, driving tottering witches and disoriented demons into the center of the room, into the obscene six-pointed circle. With another jab of the wand, he activated the drawn circle, trapping all six of them inside. With a cackle of triumph, Oliver relieved Ash of his wretched decision by banishing the three demons back to the surface of the Ever After.

Stunned and furious, Dali and Al scrambled up and braced against the sooty, stinking wind, glaring balefully at the span of crushing darkness that marked the utter absence of the nexus in the Ever After. There was no access from this side of reality — the thirteen points had all but been erased during the war, leaving a seething, icy nothingness that was confined only by some creatively interlinked curses.

Worse, Pierce, Adrian, and Brooke were beyond their reach now, protected by Coven magic from the demon's summons. Oliver might even be able to kill them, trapped as they were in their own Coven's circle, and there wasn't a bloody thing the demons could do to stop him.

"_Who was it_? By the red haze of Shekgenkis, who fucking chose _that moment_ to die?" Dali said, voice eerily calm and cold with undercurrents of suppressed rage. "We were _right there_! Moments away from reclaiming our world!"

"They won't be able to reestablish those protections in a day," Al said, though his own voice was unusually clipped. "And it's unlikely Oliver will accept his stray birds back into the fold. You saw his face. I believe our familiars are most likely dead by now."

_Dead._ Ash stared into the darkness as well, eyes unseeing. He was still shaky, unable to rise just yet, his own red haze of emotion spilling over as he saw himself swallowed up by that blackness, sinking into the well of sludge until the light of his redemption faded to a pinprick, and was gone. He'd had his one chance, and he'd blown it. He could feel her terror now, sharp and sour. And yet forcing himself to his feet seemed beyond him.

"I don't care about the _witches_." Dali's fingers glowed and he forced himself to relax. "We had one shot and now it's gone. _Who was it_? I'll kill them again. Twice more! Slowly!"

Al glanced at Ash, swore, rolled his eyes, and sighed. "Who _else…_?" He laid a hand on Ash's shoulder, in what might have been a kindly gesture if his fingers hadn't been white and Ash hadn't winced in response. "Come on, Kavi. On your feet. Let's go get her."

**End of Mile with Sorrow**

_The first chapter of the final story (as yet untitled) will be posted very soon!_


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